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AT OUR BEST. 



BY 



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SUMNER ELLIS. 



"There are those whose spirits walk 
Abreast of angels and the future here." 

Bailey's Festus. 



: OF Co^k 



BOSTON: A 

LEE AND SHEPARD. 

NEW YORK : LEE, SHEPARD, AND DILLINGHAM. 

1873. 



^ K 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

SUMNER ELLIS, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
PRESS OE JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. At Our Best 3 

II. Our Elect 42 

ILL Daily Sunshine 76 

IY. A Low Tone 112 

V. Contentment . . . . ...... 140 

VI. Courage 170 

VII. The Home 210 

VIII. Ourselves and Others 247 

IX. On the Square . 292 



AT OTJR BEST. 



AT OUR BEST. 



I. 

AT OUR BEST. 

• Though Time thy bloom is stealing, 
There 's still beyond his art 
The wild-flower wreath of feeling." 

Halleck. 

( The soul of music slumbers in the shell, 
Till wak'd and kindled by the master's spell; 
And feeling hearts, touch them but lightly, pour 
A thousand melodies unheard before." 

Rogers's Human Life. 

W 7"E have had many definitions of genius, 
r and many refusals to attempt to define 

it, as somewhat that is indefinable, a thing that 
eludes and takes some other shape, and when we 
think we have it we have it not. Like beauty, 
inspiration, and instinct, it lies in a region of 
uncertain and shifting lights ; is itself, and not 
itself; appears to be this till another view 



4 AT OTJR BEST. 

dawns, and it must be that : but the last will not 
stick better than the first, in the presence of 
some other revelation. But, after all the learned 
clamor, what if genius were so simple a thing 
as a larger and finer degree of sensibility, a plus 
of vital heat, some more feeling and spirit among 
our talents ! 

Every one knows what advantage lies in be- 
ing kindled. For he who could say nothing be- 
fore can say anything now, and with rare logic, 
imagination, and pertinency: sterility becomes 
suddenly fertile, as if the desert were to bloom 
and bear fruit at once ; cowardice gives place to 
courage, or we have exchanged our fawn for 
a lion. Am I the same man to-day I was yes- 
terday ? — now so aerial and lithe, and full of 
rapt visions, and eager for better communions, 
having down my rare books for rare occasions, 
or fleeing to gaze again, and worthily, at some 
fine landscape or work of art, but then only 
a mole without eyes in some dark corner, or 
an oyster in the mud, or a foolish bat flying 
blind in the day. The same, and not the same ; 
the same plus a heat that has freed the frozen 
and pent-up currents, or a quickened sensibil- 
ity that gives me to myself, installs me in full 
command of my powers, and befriends intu- 



AT OUB, BEST. 5 

itions and spontaneities, as a better atmosphere 
gives sharpness and range to the eye. 

Every one is now and then above his talent, 
and would be taken to be, not himself, but an- 
other ; as the dray-horse, on occasions, rises into 
airs and antics, and we must think some Flying 
Childers or Arabian barb had slept within him 
until now. The most ordinary minds ascend 
into mounts they cannot keep, caught up and 
borne aloft by some tidal wave of feeling. We 
overtake our dreams, if speeded by a new and 
powerful impulse. Once or twice, or oftener, in 
a lifetime, we shall meet the universe aplomb 
and level, and find open and easy and charm- 
ing relations ; see eye to eye ; vibrate like harps 
to the finer winds ; look into strange secrets 
and break old illusions with a cool unconcern, 
as if we were beforehand with these things, and 
realize that we have given a moment's relief to 
the usual condescensions in our favor. The an- 
gels of every order seem on the point of pro- 
claiming our peership. High legends and heroic 
anecdotes read as if quite low in their tone ; be- 
lief in miracles is at last easy ; and we should 
expect, were the celebrated wits and wise men 
back again, they would offer us their hand, and 
ask us to dinner, and install us in their clubs. 



b AT OUR BEST. 

We have suddenly broken into superior ranks. 
And how Hope now plumes her wings ! Hence- 
forth we have done with common clay ! Adieu, 
ye lower walks and dull, foolish hours ! 

But alas ! to-morrow will be another yester- 
day. We all know the valley on the other side 
of this mountain, and that our descent is too 
sure to the old ways of plodding and jogging. 
Here we are once more hammering cold iron, 
for the fire has gone out in our forge ; again 
bungling and botching at our tasks ; again at our 
doom of forcing very ordinary results that but 
just now came of themselves, and with a higher 
beauty and charm. We have not the sensibility 
for long elevation; cannot command at pleas- 
ure the degree of feeling or inspiration that 
insures a ready and easy success. Our April 
tide ends in an August drought. 

The fervent spirit cannot be too much counted 
on or coveted, and especially by Englishmen 
and Americans, who have inherited the coldness 
and hardness of their Saxon ancestors. The first 
petition in all our prayers might well be, — 
" Give us more and finer feeling, O most vital 
One ! " The outcry of Hafiz for ecstasy, which 
he calls " wine," abating its Oriental verbiage, 
might well enough be adopted by any of us, and 
said before breakfast every morning : — 



AT OUR BEST. 7 

" Quickly furnish me Solomon's ring ; 
Alexander's weird glass be my meed ; 
The philospher's stone to me bring ; 
Also give me the cup of Jemschid : — 
In one word, I but ask, Host of mine, 
That thou fetch me a draught of thy wine ! 
Bring me wine ! I would wash this old cowl 
From the stains which have made it so foul. 
Bring me wine ! By my puissant arm 
The thick net of deceit and of harm, 
Which the priests have spread over the world, 
Shall be rent, and in laughter be hurled. 
Bring me wine ! I the earth will subdue. 
Bring me wine ! I the heaven will storm through. 
Bring me wine, bring it quick, make no halt ! 
To the throne of both worlds I will vault. 
All is in the red streamlet divine. 
Bring me wine ! O my Host, bring me wine ! " 

Whilst the East delights to be drunk with 
feeling, the West seems to have some dread of 
fervor. It takes to one kind of intoxication 
readily enough, but it is not that of the heart. 
Emotion is at some discount with us, as if it 
were not quite creditable or bankable. I be- 
lieve laughter is down in the books as somewhat 
vulgar ; and our religion seems to be in some 
dread of pentecosts and loss of respectability, 
through fervor. We have a conceit never to 
show any signs of surprise ; for who would have 
his neighbors know that he was not beforehand 
with all secrets ? or that he does not stand level 



8 AT OUR BEST. 

with all that may happen, and in a mood to 
wonder rather that the fallings-out are so triv- 
ial ? There is a modern pride of coldness and 
stolidity, which is fatal to our poetry, and our 
social ease and triumph, and the unction and 
prevailing power of our prayers. We have made 
an idol of dignity and deliberation. Even our 
grief must conform, and mind the degrees and 
shadings of its costume, punctiliously observing 
the full and the half and the' quarter mourn- 
ing, and we know not what smaller fractions. 

But where must we look, if not into this inner 
world of feelings, if we would know both the ex- 
tent and the rank of the life we have lived, and 
are living ? What is the web we have spun, and 
are spinning, with these quick threads ? Do we 
feel only like the mollusk and snail, slightly and 
at wide intervals ? Then our life is a mere 
span, however long. It lacks vital states, and 
is as near nothing as it can be and not be that. 
On the contrary, have we many and fine mov- 
ings of mind and heart, as we may suppose a 
seraph to abound in ideas and emotions of a 
high and delightful order ? Then our life shall 
be rich and great, if it be short. Who has not 
before now found the morning set at an immeas- 
urable distance from the evening, by the many 






AT OUK BEST. 9 

vicissitudes of the day? So much life in so 
brief a time quite deludes memory ! This 
morning is a week old to the soul that has been 
through many scenes and experiences since its 
dawn. " A fortnight ! what an eternity ! " ex- 
claimed Mariana to Wilhelm, in Goethe's mysti- 
cal but charming story : a quick and fertile love 
had crowded the space with a world of thoughts, 
sentiments, dreams, fancies, and activities, so 
many and so happily full as to cause it to seem 
out of all proportion to the few fleeting days. 
Who does not frequently live two hours in one, 
or even better than that ? And this is a mira- 
cle of sensibility. The cultivated and fervid 
spirit manufactures life with as much profusion 
as the sun breeds clouds. And of a great and 
vital nature, keen of sight and feeling, as an 
e very-day advantage, the words of Thomas 
Fuller were fitly spoken : "In seventy or eighty 
years a man may have a deep gust of the 
world." 

The importance of sensibility, or holding our- 
selves at our best, may be seen in the fact, which 
can never be too much dwelt on, that the world 
is ourselves over again, — thrown out, as it were, 
from our vital states ; or, in other words, it is a 
birth from the loins of our higher being, and 



10 AT OUR BEST. 

true to its lineage. Has it not as many aspects 
as spectators? since every beholder is under 
some personal necessity of being its maker to 
the extent of its relations to himself. To the 
stone, which has no manufacturing power, it is 
a blank world, — that is, nothing ; to the lower 
orders it must look quite small and meaning- 
less ; to cats it can be only a feline universe, and 
to dogs a canine ; and to larks and lions it is 
but that which their interpreting nature permits 
it to be. And so to a Hottentot it is what his 
meagreness can make of it, and no more and no 
other ; whilst to Plato it was great as his great- 
ness could create it, and as diverse as the powers 
of his marvellous eye. The poetic sensibility 
suffuses the universe with a charming pictur- 
esqueness, as Johnson said of the poet of the 
Seasons, " He could not see two candles without 
forming a poetic image out of them." The poet 
lives in a finer world than other people. He 
overlays its prose with the ready poetry of his 
own spirit. His eyes, " larger, other eyes than 
ours," give roundness and ripple to all things. 
His fancy dresses the plain and enlivens the 
dull. To the spiritual the immensity is a spa- 
cious tabernacle filled with God or gods, and 
invites to a constant worship : whilst the un- 



AT OUR BEST. 11 

spiritual nowhere see a higher presence, but 
think the spaces are quite empty. 

The practical man misses a thousand finer 
graces from Nature, but perpetually delights in 
the economies there displayed ; that the means 
are so sure to the end ; that so much is accom- 
plished with so little fuss ; and that the machinery 
is always well oiled. He sees what a fine scaven- 
ger the ocean is, coming up twice a day to the 
back doors of the cities and carting off, in a de- 
odorizing brine, all filthy offences. He cannot 
too much dwell on the fact that water is so 
variously and widely useful, that it is good to 
drink, to have our hands clean, to run saw-mills, 
to make roads of perfect grade from inland to 
sea, to float clippers and steamers like shuttles 
between continents, and to save an army with 
watering-pots in our gardens and meadows. He 
thinks how many candles the sun dispenses with, 
and regards the night as very needful to the 
hired men and spent horses and oxen, — remind- 
ing one of the calculating Yankee who thought 
Niagara a fine place to wash sheep. Of this 
man it may be said, as of Wordsworth's Peter 
Bell, and of all hard, matter-of-fact men: — 

" The soft blue sky did never melt 
Into his heart ; he never felt 
The witchery of the soft blue sky." 



12 AT OUE BEST. 

But here is our visionary, on whose stomach 
every thing practical lies hard as not meant for 
it, and who is under some constitutional bias 
toward "airy nothings." He sees forests as the 
home of nymphs ; is a devotee of alchemy and 
astrology, to which chemistry and astronomy are 
as a farthing-candle to the sun ; dreams dreams 
like an ancient divinator, and the more romantic 
they are, the more they are confided in ; in short, 
he regards all things as what they are not. The 
humor of his eye, or his visual sensibility, unlike 
the practical man's, plays fantastical tricks and 
clothes the universe in miraculous forms and 
hues. To him there are no fairy stories, for 
these are his truths ; he questions no myths ; he 
sees chariots and horses, with marvellous trains, 
rushing through every sky, on all sorts of strange 
errands. What are the old plain truths and the 
verdicts of exact science, in his estimate, com- 
pared with those which are rapped out by spirits 
and established by the wild dance of tables ! 
Where is there integrity like that of a hazel 
stick, or wisdom so wise and so much to the 
point as that which is found at the bottom of 
a teacup ! His world is his own make, and 
indeed a marvel ! 

I once went into a friend's cupola that over- 



AT OUR BEST. 13 

looked the city and the sea and a broad horizon 
of hills, and found he had glass windows of sev- 
eral tints and various shadings, that he might 
gratify his moods, — possibly modify them a 
trifle. When he had on a verdant humor, he 
would run to the green outlook ; when a saffron 
whim, he as promptly indulged it; again, a 
depression, begotten of an east wind, or late 
supper of pork and beans, or a fall in stocks, 
would send him to the blue lights ; at another 
time he found himself invited to the dim relig- 
ious shades ; and, in seasons of ardency and 
glowing heat, he forsook all but the scarlet and 
crimson hues. But I thought how unphilosoph- 
ical was this philosopher, since his own moods 
would supply adequate ochre, cochineal, log- 
wood, indigo, jaundice, or what not, with w T hich 
to decorate or daub the world. There is no 
painter like the soul, and its colors are instant 
and made on the spot. The eye is a fountain 
of hues. 

So Montaigne said, " The feast is in the pal- 
ate ; " and it is evident, as a famous instance 
shows, that sublimit}?- must be in the eye before 
it can be seen looming on mountain or ocean, — 
for whilst Byron, who "always liked to break 
his mind on something craggy," was gazing in 



14 AT OUR BEST. 

awe at Mont Blanc, from the Valley of Cha- 
mouni, he overheard an Englishwoman remark 
quite indifferently to her party, " Did you ever 
see any thing more rural ? " And whoever 
watches visitors at Niagara cannot fail to detect 
that every one brings in his eye the Falls he 
sees ; or, rather, that what they appear to one 
and another is a matter already decided by the 
order and measure of impressionability in each. 
And should we not always go unattended to the 
great scenes of nature, also to the masterpieces 
of art, — especially if we have natural and ac- 
quired gifts, — that our views may be entirely 
free and our sensibility unperverted ? Should 
we not shake off the frivolous, the conceited, 
the cold, as we would exclude the profane from 
our altars? The high meaning of Coleridge's 
well-known lines will never be set aside : — 

" We receive but what we give, 
And in our life alone does Nature live ; 
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud ! 
And would we aught behold of higher worth, 
Than that inanimate cold world allowed 
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd, 
Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth 
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud, 

Enveloping the earth. 
And from the soul itself must there be sent 
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
Of all sweet sounds the life and element." 



AT OUR BEST. 15 

Books, arts, men, and conversation share 
the fate that befalls the universe, from the pres- 
ence of our creating and fashioning spirits, 
that must see so or so, and not otherwise. It 
was said, " Gibbon Gibbonized history ; " and I 
suppose every one of us rubs his identity into 
the book he reads, or reads himself as much as 
his author, by being a sort of joint-composer. 
It would be difficult to say to what extent the 
meanings are the reader's, and not the writer's. 
We can believe that many an old author would 
be struck with wonder to know what wise mean- 
ings, beyond all his intentions, his modern com- 
mentator gets out of him, or puts into him. A 
high sensibility befriends greatly the pages it 
comes to, and all books have a heavy debt to 
their good readers. A better logic improves the 
argument ; a more perfect imagination finishes 
the pictures. Only they who bring Bible to Bible, 
or a superior literary sense to literature, do them 
justice, or gladden themselves by their perusal. 
After reading one of Southey's sonnets, with a 
throbbing heart and eyes brimming with tears, 
Dr. Channing handed it to a lady, who read it 
and observed : " Doctor, I do think it is pretty." 
"Pretty!" exclaimed the great divine, with 
what of horror we may well imagine. But we 



16 AT OUR BEST. 

have only to remember that he and she found 
in the lines what they brought to them ; whilst 
to one of conceivable lowness and stolidity they 
would have been utterly desert lines. 

All written and spoken jests, as we well know, 
are quite lost on those natures that have not the 
jest-creating humor, but must regard every 
thing: through their solemn directness as much 
like a statement under oath. They are jest- 
blind, as some are color-blind. They cannot 
discern, from constitutional defect, the jocular 
side of a story. It is a famous anecdote in this 
line, that of the young mother, w^ho, amid her 
idolatry for her first-born, asked Charles Lamb, 
the incorrigible but facetious bachelor, how he 
liked babies, and when he replied, " Boiled, 
ma'am," she thought him a cannibal who should 
be straightway banished to the Fejee Islands. 

Music is made by the skill and sensibility of 
the listener, who takes the atmospheric motions 
supplied him and works them up the best he 
can. The instrument and voice furnish, as it 
were, raw material, and the final manufacture 
is in the ear and the soul, and according to their 
music-making capacity and habit; as one man 
can make a good shoe, and another only a bad, 
out of the same piece of leather. Woe to the 



AT OUR BEST. 17 

party that goes to the opera and is not prepared 
to carry the opera ; for such an one will find 
what a fellow-sufferer has called " the measured 
malice of music." Dr. Johnson thought that if 
he were to enjoy music, even in heaven, a new 
sense must be given him ; and he signified his 
rough disrelish by replying to a woman who 
asked him if he did not think it was wonderful 
that so many tunes could be made from eight 
notes, — "No, I don't think it wonderful; but 
I wish it had been impossible." Walter Scott 
shared a similar defect. He only claimed to 
have a " reasonable good ear for a jig, but that 
solos and sonatas gave him the spleen." And 
we have it from Julian Charles Young, the son 
of the tragedian, who spent a short season at 
Abbotsford, that "a young lady in the house 
sang divinely ; but her singing gave Scott no 
pleasure." 

We know that a bad mill makes bad flour of 
the best wheat ; whilst a fine power of grinding 
and bolting renders another result for our tables. 
And human nature is a laboratory with an equal 
dependence on itself for the way the world is 
worked up, the soul being a prime factor in all 
vision, interpretation, and conclusion, and setting 
a personal stamp on action. The ego intrudes 
2 



18 AT OUK BEST. 

in all we think and say and do. No man can 
escape himself. Character crops out and changes 
all things to its own complexion. Mrs. Siddons's 
tragic genius turned the world into a stage, and, 
we are told, she stabbed her potatoes and ordered 
a broth with a histrionic air. And not less does 
the spirit tell for itself in you and me, and give 
shape and color to events ; and he who would 
have a new universe must first make himself 
over, and become another man. 

Another miracle of sensibility is seen in the 
magic power it exerts over others. There is no 
limit to be set to the sway of the kindled and 
earnest life ; as if it drew infinitude into its 
service, or it were such a charm to yield to its 
magnetism that we cannot and would not resist. 
The enchanted are ever the enchanters. Momus 
never misses his gift, nor Apollo, nor any one 
else. The lawyer who has most of vital heat 
has the jury; and even the judge, in spite of 
himself, falls under the spell, as the bird plays 
into the jaws of the snake. The wide-awake 
boy or man is given the lead in all enterprises 
and adventures. The battle may be lost ; 
but some enthusiastic general, like Montluc or 
Sheridan, arrives on the ground and charges 
every soldier with his own courage and force 



AT OTJB, BEST. 19 

— like multiplying himself by tens of thousand^ 

— and the tide is turned. Sydney Smith easily 
enough overcame the most dubious gravity with 
his volumes of wit ; and every wag is a house- 
warmer wherever he comes, and sets the most 
glum silence into an uproar. When Whitefield 
begged for charity, with his whole being frantic, 
misers unbuttoned their pockets ; and so cool a 
man as Dr. Franklin was lucky in not having his 
whole estate along with him, to throw into the 
contribution-box. Aflame with an idea, Peter 
the Hermit melted Europe into the frenzy of 
consent, and drew on the Crusades. These are 
examples of the supremacy of sensibility, whose 
magic wand touches and controls us daily, for 
good or evil, — in the orator's voice, or the 
friend's- persuasions, or the beggar's appeals. 
What wilt thou have, my precious enthusiast ? 
Time, toil, money, tears, submission, the sur- 
render of reason, or my body for the pillory or 
the flames? Take them, and be welcome. It 
was said that when Brahma walked the earth, 
the gold in its veins exclaimed, " Here am I, 
O most Eminent ! take me, and do with me as 
thou wilt." So we hasten to offer ourselves, 
body and soul, to the magnet of high emotion ; 
and may have need next year, or sooner, to 
return on our too hasty steps. 



20 AT OUR BEST. 

And it would almost seem that all those ob- 
jects about which we apply ourselves, the mate- . 
rials upon which we work, such as wood and 
stone, brass and iron, truth and art, facts and 
fancies, have a voluntary regard for the spirit 
of genius ; for the inspired workman finds a 
sort of mysterious concurrence on their part — 
as it were, an advance to meet him half way, 
and a desire to fall in with his purpose — that the 
uninspired does not. The best work, of every 
kind, is done with heat and a freedom from 
painful effort, is a vital more than a mechanical 
operation ; and there can be only low results in 
the absence of high feeling. " Authors' moods " 
are proverbial ; and what heavy prices are paid 
for them I need not say. The haymakers find 
a little stimulation at " 'leven o'clock " sharpens 
the scythe or softens the grass, and makes an 
acre look less than it is. The work in the 
kitchen goes on well if there is spirit for it, and 
ill if there is not. We all know the value of 
the social impulse in society, and with what 
stammering and discredit we come off without 
it, forgetting our best thoughts and fine vocabu- 
lary, and furnishing but a modicum of stale 
bread to the invited feast. Honey-bees will yield 
everything to this man, and sting the next ; and 



AT OUB, BEST. 21 

there seems to be a like favoritism in all nature. 
What partiality among the stupid fish toward 
your hook, or mine ! How game puts itself in 
the way of Nimrod, and is out of the way before 
Benedict comes near ! But the secret of all 
success is an inspiration in the work in hand, 
which makes a jack-knife and gimlet better than 
a kit of tools to a dullard. 

Once more, it is feeling that rounds us into 
persons, one by one, and into groups socially. 
Temperament breaks up the uniformity of society 
and groups us on the score of like and like. Our 
magnetisms unite us. If we have nothing in 
common, we shall be quite indifferent to each 
other ; or, like all opposites, we shall repel and 
fly asunder. My solitude is more companion- 
able than the presence of ten or a thousand 
who do not belong to me by deeper sympathies. 
And unless in every party and neighborhood the 
social distribution is a free process, and accord- 
ing to this higher law, there shall be no ease or 
satisfaction of intercourse. What is yours you 
will find and enjoy, and what is not yours you 
will gladly leave to him whose it may be ; and 
it may happen that this inclusion and exclusion 
shall drive one and another into the corner to 
sit alone. And if it is contended that this is 



22 AT OUR BEST. 

undemocratic and ill-usage of fellow-guests, we 
must reply, it is idle to hold a quarrel with grav- 
itation that groups stars and souls alike. 

" For sparks electric only strike 
On souls electrical alike ; 
The flash of intellect expires, 
Unless it meet congenial fires/' 

Decorum and even a degree of tenderness, 
on high grounds, are due to all, — yes, to bores 
who come when they are not wanted and stay 
till the crack of doom, and to fribbles and tri- 
flers who chaffer in the face of every solemnity ; 
but all Nature, tugging at her own, and seeking 
the congenial alliances, excuses us from forced 
social connections. It is a broad privilege, with 
the highest sanction, this of " jackdaw to jack- 
daw " and emmet to emmet. The whole world 
is giving us this text daily. The affinities of 
sensibility are to be guarded by reason, but are 
not to be denied, since they are better guides 
than our wits, and carry the prophecy of the 
best society in respect of variety and elevation. 
All miscellaneous life must be low and unpoetic ; 
and, shall we not say, without the best moral 
tone ? Spare us the feeling that is elective and 
fastidious, and that draws us out of and above a 
Chinese uniformity ! Let me seek and reject 



AT OUft BEST. 23 

whom I must, with this sure sense of my being ; 
and I will honor him who covets or shuns me. 
For this he also has right and title in his con- 
stitution, as well as in the better results that 
will follow. 

In short, the sharing of a high degree of fine 
feeling, since it fills the time and place with 
a happy sufficingness, multiplying and magnify- 
ing vital conditions to our hearts' content, will 
save all need of running after sensations. It is 
the grace that helps us to stay at home with 
more of realization and relish than any who 
have it not can find in travel. It renews Eden 
under any sky. It makes life seem great and 
worth the while, and reconciles us to our being 
and lot. We weary of dulness, but a fulness of 
better emotions breeds contentment ; and we 
would stay, like Peter, where the sacred tide so 
abounds. Paradise will be happily busy, and 
therefore we shall not want to run away. The 
rapt student forgets to go to bed till some- 
body blows out his candle. " Twelve o'clock ! 
why, I thought it was just in the edge of the 
evening," says the enchanted visitor, and halt- 
ingly asks for his hat. 

But how shall we reach an eminent vitality, 
and its better wit and succession of transports ? 



24 AT OUR BEST. 

How are we to hold ourselves at the top of 
our emotional condition? How have our bat- 
teries charged ? 

The first requisite is a large share of quiet and 
repose in our habits, to admit of a healthy and 
full state of nerves, senses, animal spirits, 
and of the finer reservoirs, — mind, heart, and 
soul. There is not only more dignity but bet- 
ter feeling in a serene bearing and a life of 
pauses and waiting. Some of the best things 
are not overtaken by pursuit, will not conde- 
scend to a man out of breath, hate and fly the 
insanity of haste, refuse to fellowship with ex- 
haustion ; and few will need to be told that 
among these best things is a perfect degree of 
sensibility. By too much whirl we are jaded 
and benumbed. Overwork leads to underfeel- 
ing. Weariness has an effect like morphine. I 
noticed that our party who walked up Mt. 
Washington from the Glen House, and squan- 
dered their powers, had much less of rapture on 
the summit than those who rode up : we saw 
with a blur, and felt after a sluggish fashion, or 
were lying around the stove asleep, whilst the 
others were on the fresh run for views, and 
abounding with emotions ; that is, we had fool- 



AT OUR BEST. 25 

ishly saved three dollars, and lost the clouds and 
the most sublime of the sublimities. It is the 
testimony of generals that tired soldiers are 
much less capable of patriotic feelings and mili- 
tary pride, and are unfit to meet the ardor and 
courage of fresh troops. Excess of study dazes 
the brain, and the idler is often the better 
scholar, as having his powers highly charged 
and in full play ; and so eloquence is not more 
facts gathered by incessant delving, but more 
feeling drawn from the open sky and the genial 
walk. The unfinished sermon that steals the 
minister's sleep on Saturday night makes pro- 
lific return to his congregation on Sunday ; and 
the man who walks five miles to worship is a 
bad worshipper at church, however devout he 
may be at home, for piety moves with the blood, 
or the Holy Ghost respects a high state of health. 
To come to the social circle from too many toils 
and cares, from the hours of hard work, is to 
incur the discredit of dotage and senility in 
early life, with our heavy eyes and stupid "yes" 
and " no" in the conversation. If my friend 
comes a long way to see me, and has spent a 
day and a night in the cars without sleep, I 
will shake hands with him and send him to bed, 
and turn the key on him for twenty-four hours ; 



26 AT OUB, BEST. 

when, if he sleeps well and recovers himself, he 
will be fit to be seen. Every one is reduced to 
punk and deadness by too much exertion, as a 
waste of vital heat in warming our bed leaves 
us cold, or squandering it on an arctic or Alpine 
temperature draws on stupor and death. The 
wise miller husbands his headwater, — has the 
gate shut more than it is open, to keep the 
desired fulness ; and there should be equal 
economy with the tide of life, if we would 
not be empty cisterns. 

What means this demand of our time for sen- 
sational feats ? Why has a flash literature, hav- 
ing neither beauty nor depth, crowded out a 
better, and become a sort of necessity with our 
readers ? Why does some loud and vulgar- 
mouthed quack in the pulpit, where culture and 
grace should alone be permitted, or on the ros- 
trum, get a hearing that wisdom and worth like 
St. Paul's could not command ? Why must our 
theatres forsake the high and pure drama, which 
was once in vogue and ample, and have instead 
fireworks, nakedness, bar-room bluster, monkey 
shows, and endless rout of claptrap, wherewith 
to draw and entertain our ladies and gentlemen ? 
What means this morbid demand for extrava- 
ganza, as if sound was not sound till it becomes 



AT OUR BEST. 27 

uproar, nor color color till it reaches the extreme 
that has effect with savages ? Our politics have 
become dramatic and puerile, a matter of torch- 
lights, paper lanterns, boyish trappings, and 
stump-speeches by Tom, Dick, and Harry, whose 
only outfit is one of lungs, — as if citizens 
were short of brains, and would vote with the 
party that sounds the most trumpets ; as if, in 
fact, the patriotic nerve were so nearly dead 
that our republicans stand in need of being 
played on by galvanic batteries to break their 
stupor. We noticed, at the Coliseum, that a 
fine symphony had a rather feeble effect, and 
our weary populace took the time to yawn and 
subside into vacancy; but the Anvil Chorus 
pounded them into some degree of wakefulness, 
and life came once more into their eyes and 
faces. There has come to be a necessity for 
extremes in the fashions, or the point is lost; 
for both the wearer and the observer are de- 
void of that better sense of the eye that notes 
the truly artistic and fit in costumes. And it 
was without surprise that we learned of a young 
lady who, sharing the low dull sense of the time 
for beauty, exchanged her modest diamonds, at 
the dollar-store, for a quantity of showy glass and 
gilt. We seem to be fast settling into a state 



28 AT OUR BEST. 

that responds only to the firing of cannons and 
bray of trumpets, or lapsing into a lower animal 
condition, a sort of rhinoceros stupor, which is 
moved only by red-hot irons or melted pitch. 
The growing demand for sensations betrays our 
present sad lapse ; and who shall tell the con- 
sequent loss to the race of the finest and best 
elements of life. 

In other words, I accuse the age of a crim- 
inal weariness and exhaustion, through its stress 
of competitions, cares, running to and fro, and 
habitual overwork ; and so, as the sot loses his 
acute taste, and must have brandy and burn- 
ing-fluid to raise an appreciable effect, we who 
have dulled the proper and desirable keenness 
and quickness of our impressionability crave the 
vulgar degrees in all things. We are spent, and 
why should we not be dull ? Our night has not its 
olden quiet ; our day is not peaceful as once ; our 
life is fretted and worn and wasted ; crushed out 
and cut short in its midst, it may be ; offered up 
to Pluto and the Furies ; and thus, devoid of a 
composed and sensitive fulness, it is but a poor, 
played-out, and cheap life. We rush through and 
die, giving ourselves no healthy and invigorat- 
ing leisure by the way ; and let us hope when 
we are utterly out of breath we shall then have 



AT OUR BEST. 29 

time to breathe, and enter leisurely, as we should, 
into more vital and precious relations with the 
universe. But why not have some serenity and 
poetic transports every day? Why not now 
slacken into greater speed ? Are we not like 
the insane crowd, whose rush to get out of 
church only hinders ? If we attempted to live 
less, should we not live more and better, as the 
artist's frequent throwing aside of his brush, 
to recover fresh spirit and power, is his only 
hope of merit? Weariness is weakness, and 
must have two days instead of one ; and all its 
victories will be indifferent, a little below the best, 
force-puts, and not free and abounding thoughts 
and deeds. The finest crystals come quick, 
from the full life of Nature. Our railroads 
have found it economy of machinery to make 
less speed and take more time ; but our men 
and women drive the wheels of their being at a 
fatal pace, and are spent at forty. The game is 
then up with them. There is no more appetite 
or keen zest. To spare is to gain ; but they 
learn the secret too late. 

It is also a condition we must respect, to the 
end of the best measures of spirit and power, 
— I mean self-reliance, and, if need be, non-con- 
formity. It is pitiful, the amount of feeling 



30 AT OUR BEST. 

and vital being that are bartered for custom and 
established usage. The play is largely carried 
on outside of us, and is a dull performance. Let 
us be crushed into the popular type, however 
absurd, as the " heathen Chinee " has his foot, 
or wadded and padded to the pattern which is 
just now in style ! Teach us the attitudes and 
draw us into exact line with the rank and 
file, ye friendly powers ! and we will ask no 
question about the cost in the fine coin of Na- 
ture and precious experiences ! Spare us from 
being original and true to ourselves ! But self- 
fidelity and freedom are the price of genuine 
and gladdening feeling. The emotions flow 
" best in their native channels, as rubber and tar 
are fluent in the tree, but harden in any artificial 
duct. We do nothing heartily and happily that 
we do not do honestly, with a single eye and 
perfect self-reliance. If our faith and word 
and act are our own, as the flower belongs to 
the stem, or the limb to the body, then shall 
they seem deep and full, and it may be of infinite 
value as bringing us into fellowship with the ages 
and the stars ; but if they are only echoes and 
imitations we shall fall asleep under their influ- 
ence, and to-morrow awake in the likeness of 
all sceptics who have tried to hold faith at sec- 



AT OTJK, BEST. 31 

ond hand. The lawyer never makes his best 
plea on the wrong side of the case, since he is 
thus displaced from his active centre and sense 
of justice which, as it were, would make the 
cause his own, and his words above a money- 
value. 

A company of personalities, each true to 
itself, is a great social success : here shall be 
beauty, poetry, heat, volumes of real feeling ; but 
overshadow and reduce them by some whim of 
ceremonial usage, — that is, draw on mannerism, 
— and no affair could be more stupid. They are 
now only wax figures and puppets ; and would 
fall to yawning, if that also were not an undue 
freedom and comfort. One often wishes, in 
such cramp and benumbed condition, that some- 
body would have a hysterical fit, or overturn a 
table, or knock a vase or two off the mantel, or do 
some other charitable act to make us forgetful and 
free, and set us once more at our ease and joy. 
Conformity often holds the flow of emotions as 
ice does the flow of waters, and the likeness in 
the two cases extends even to temperature. 

Nature is sensitive in every fibre and fila- 
ment, is all life and genial flow ; and so every 
one's proneness must be allowed its own way, or 
subjected to the fewest checks possible, in order 



32 AT OTJB BEST. 

to his best feeling. Let the poet sing his songs, 
the explorer have his ships and furnishings and 
long voyages, the hero his blood-stirring and 
hair-lifting ventures, the scientist his bugs and 
bottles, the jockey his old horses, the wag his 
waggery, the lazy their easy seats, lovers their 
secluded stroll and the moonlight, the scholar 
his library ; and all hands, save thieves and 
sots, as much of what they want as can be fur- 
nished. Let us even be tender of this man's 
conceit and that woman's caprice ; for, if we in- 
dulge them, our own liberty is a little securer, 
and we all live much in some pet crotchet or 
obstinate freak which, like an unsightly wart, 
is a part of us. Let those have poodles and 
rabbits who can enjoy them ; and if your friend 
takes to rattlesnakes, humor his liking and 
keep him a little ahead in every wild tramp, — 
what is his relish may prove your rescue. We 
can never too much admire how the Greeks re- 
spected Diogenes in his tub, and Socrates in his 
old coat. If Madame Bloomer will wear bloom- 
ers, we can afford to let her have this pleasure, 
and only betray by how much she is our supe- 
rior if we condescend to sneer or join the boys 
who run after her on the street. It was a great 
advance of law when there came to be no law 



AT OUR BEST. 33 

concerning creeds and costumes and customs, but 
all people came to be protected alike in their good 
sense and vagaries, since this was a step gained 
in favor of nature and sensibility. Liberty is the 
key to life. The wild strawberry has the better 
flavor, and quart for quart will drive your forced 
Seedlings and Hoveys from the table. The 
country youth is beautiful as a fawn on the hills, 
but is dwarfed in a city parlor. The best livers 
in the land are the born and bred yeomen, so 
long as they keep to their rural instincts and 
habits ; but they are smitten with a lingering 
death the moment they move to New York or 
Paris, and try to be fashionable at Saratoga and 
Long Branch. Indeed ! Here is Jonas asleep 
at the soiree, and Patience has heedlessly 
dropped her domino at the masquerade ! 

My style is not yours. Your problem is not 
mine. Personalities are as various as the peo- 
ple are numerous, as there are no two leaves 
alike in all the forest. And the short and sure 
road to dulness and death is a forced con- 
formity. " Hands off ! " is what every soul must 
sternly say to all who would divert and drag it 
to some other end, if it would be and do its 
best ; for in that in which it naturally differs lies 
its hope of superiority. 



34 AT OTTK BEST. 

Furthermore, the better feelings are set in play 
by the favoring influences that surround them, 
as music is drawn by running the fingers over 
the key-board. We daily observe the happy 
effect of occasions, — friends, books, sermons, 
clouds, pictures and statues, flowers and waves ; 
for — 

" Spirits are not finely touched 
But to fine issues." 

The most signal fact of our being is its impres- 
sionability, as if we were perfect harps waiting 
to be breathed upon. Our nature is mobile and 
reactionary. We answer to frictions, as two 
sticks may be rubbed to a flame. Our respon- 
siveness is something marvellous, and not 
without peril, as exposing us to tortures and 
temptations ; whilst it is the source of what con- 
stant and various delights ! Every sense lies 
open to the world and gives a swift report ; cer- 
tifies us of our surroundings; knows sweet 
from bitter, soft from hard, the blue sky from 
the black cloud, the flute and harp from the 
dinner-gong ; and happy they who respect the 
choice of the senses. But not less is the soul 
conscious, and unprotected. It always knows 
where it is, and with whom ; and all things are 
its occasions. 



AT OUR BEST, 35 

Would you see what conversation does ? Ob- 
serve that knot of excited men on the corner of 
the street, who met without any flow in their 
blood or color on their faces, but have now got the 
full tide on, and tongues and elbows all going at 
once. Whose languor will not a lyric, read or 
sung, refresh like a cup of sparkling water ? Is 
not Shakespeare the best of all tonics? The 
notes of the flute, floating on the night air, make 
us superior to sleep. The ring of the door-bell 
and the announcement of a friend draw us out 
of our after-dinner nap, and we exchange a dead 
hour for a living one, with some degree of grati- 
tude toward the intruder. We yield to small 
matters of influence as to magic, which may well 
lead us to hope that, even when the apparently 
strongest persuasions fail, there is some adaptive 
trifle that shall succeed ; and that there is a key, 
if we can but find it, to every heart, as Achilles 
was vulnerable in his heel, and Baldur the son of 
Odin could be hit with an arrow of mistletoe. 
May it not be that the conversion of the worst 
soul, and drawing on of its lost, purity, is after 
all an easy affair, if we but knew the secret of 
time and instrument ? It is said of an Italian 
bandit, hardened by years of robbery, that, 
chancing to hear a parrot pronounce the name 



36 AT OUR BEST. 

of his mother, it overwhelmed him with memo- 
ries and emotions, gave instant supremacy to his? 
earlier and better habits, and sent him straight- 
way to her whose name thus opportunely and 
strangely sounded had saved him. How the 
soul answers to a home-strain of music in a for- 
eign land ! A chance note of the nightingale or 
whippoorwill often surprises us into an intense 
sensibility. What ! in tears that a ray of sun- 
light has strayed into the parlor and fallen on 
some precious keepsake ! Even so. A word 
may be greater than an oration. Omnipotence 
is in this or that trifle, and our whole being 
thrills at its touch. And this is a revelation 
of our wonderful accessibility, and an advice to 
find favoring relations, as we set the harp in the 
wind. 

It was the morning sun that daily awoke Mem- 
non's statue to music ; and the old fable has an 
ever new application, for still the rosy dawn of 
the day inspires song, and any advent of beauty 
and grace has a kindred value. Who does not 
find fresh air very favorable to buoyancy of spir- 
its ? An open window is often a means of more 
grace and better prayers, — which led an impious 
preacher of our time to claim that the wt Holy 
Ghost is nothing but oxygen." The celebrated 



AT OUB BEST. 37 

landscape painter, Claude, filled his eye with new 
beauty and his soul with fresh emotion every 
time he visited Nature, and hastened back to 
his canvas to transfix the vision and glow ; 
and I suppose all hearts answer back to the 
hills and valleys, have other and higher emo- 
tions when face to face with them, which is the 
reason, no doubt, that the ancients thought 
there must be finer presences here, — divinities, 
muses, nymphs, and genii, — and that poets and 
philosophers and sages should come out from the 
close and stifled air of cities, and write and teach 
in groves. There is certainly no better fortune 
than to be set into close union with Nature, and 
yield our life lovingly to her charged batteries. 
There is grace for us in her breath. Gardens 
and grass-plats serve well to stir the gentler and 
finer feelings which befit our every-day needs ; 
and our suburbans have an untold advantage 
over our city populations. But the shovel and 
hoe and rake cannot make the earth grand and 
moving. Our hearts crave the rough and un- 
tamed world, to draw on their latent energies 
and strong emotions. What stirs us like the 
mountains, Niagara, the prairie, the ocean, and 
the midnight heavens ? What sets us at our best 
like the solitudes of forest and lake? as if a 



38 AT OUR BEST. 

better genius took charge of us and gave us other 
and higher secrets. And we must not neglect 
these wild favors, and only sip at the honey- 
dew on the hedges and flowers at our front 
doors. 

Our modern life seems to want poetic range 
through Nature's better provinces. It is too 
much withdrawn into a domain of petty details. 
The aboriginal world is likely to be lost to our 
civilization, and with it the race of heroes and 
saints. Our wisdom is weakness. We are be- 
coming cosmopolitan dwarfs, city dolls, slaves 
to the trivial and frivolous, which our arts have 
multiplied beyond all need; and we should be 
set back into simpler and rougher ways, and 
bred anew to plain and strong habits of thought 
and feeling. Our parlors belittle us, and we 
need to be driven out to suck life from the full 
and flowing pores of the universe. 

Even our science limits and restrains to dry 
and dusty specimens and the details of the ter- 
restrial carpentry, noting where are the joints, 
and how many pieces in the mechanism, and in 
what way they can be taken apart and put to- 
gether again. It is a sign of the loss of sensi- 
bility and better appreciation, when we count 
the stamens of the painted flower instead of 



AT OUR BEST. 39 

catching the floral influence, which is the main 
thing, as the soul is more than the body, or the 
spirit than the letter. But are we not subject- 
ing Nature to a similar cold enumeration and 
analysis ? It is a universe of powers, and not 
of names; but modern science looks as if set 
up too exclusively in the interest of dissection 
and lower discoveries, — a post-mortem treat- 
ment of a dead Nature. It takes note of statics 
at the expense of dynamics : it is all eye for the 
mechanical, but shares a blunted sense of the 
spiritual and real. 

What is worse than an empty and pretentious 
nomenclature, — a botany of terms and not of 
powers and graces, or a geology of dust that 
ignores divinity ? Is it not like the study of 
poetry with an eye to scanning and metre simply ? 
or architecture, with reference only to its per- 
pendiculars and horizontals ? Is it not as if one 
should see in the tears that bead themselves on 
the cheek, what science has lately defined them : 
" Water rendered slightly saline by common 
salt, and containing also a little albumen com- 
bined with soda " ? It may be true still that 
" the deceived are wiser than the undeceived." 
The clouds are more to the poet or the peasant 
or the child than to the exact scholar who reads 



40 AT OUK BEST. 

out the illusion. If to know more is to know 
less, then spare us the negative wisdom. Leave 
us our primers, if you must take with them our 
first fresh sense of the world. At any rate, sci- 
ence shall render small service if it do not foster 
our higher sensibilities and give us a living and 
speaking world, with God immanent in every 
atom and process. 

Some one has said, " If you would seek life, 
seek it not." But I think it was better sense 
in the boy who, being accosted by a comrade as 
to his errand, said, " I'm going after fun." Our 
waiting hearts suggest our duty in this matter 
of finding the best and most promising relations. 
We must seek life. We must hunt for this fine 
game. We must strive to have ourselves set at 
our best. Shall we not come out under the sky 
and into the sunshine ? Shall we not stroll in 
the September moonlight, give a frequent hour 
to a friend, hang some more pictures on our 
walls, go to the opera, take a solitary or social 
walk, as we need and can best enjoy, keep a 
carriage, cultivate flowers or fish or hens, or do 
a thousand things, just to gain one more happy 
beat of life's pulse ? Is not our heedlessness of 
the conditions much to our detriment and dis- 
credit ? 



AT OUR BEST. 41 

Let me, in conclusion, commend Mr. Emer- 
son's lesson, in these significant lines, as one 
we may well heed : — 

" Was never form and never face 
So sweet to Seyd as only grace, 
Which did not slumber like a stone, 
But holered gleaming and was gone. 
Beauty chased he everywhere, 
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
He smote the lake to feed his eye 
With the beryl beam of the broken wave; 
He flung the pebbles in to hear 
The moment's music which they gave/' 



II. 

OUR ELECT. 

" We were so close within each other's breast, 
The rivets were not found that join'd us first. 
That does not reach us yet : we are so mix'd, 
As meeting streams, — both to ourselves were lost. 
"We were one mass, we could not give or take, 
But from the same: for he was I; I, he." 

Drydeit. 

" Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best." 

Webster's Duchess of Malfy. 

" Turn him, and see his threads : look, if he be 
Fri' nd to himself, that would be friend to thee; 
For that is first requir'd, a man be his own ; 
But he that 's too much that is friend to none." 

Ben Jonson. 

COMPANIONSHIP is an ever-lessening and 
^■^ rising ring ; begins with the crowd on the 
street, and ends with the elect, which is often a 
company of two, — a double self : such pairs as 
Damon and Pythias, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Tennyson and Hallam, and the two school-girls, 
who for the present recline and dally in each 
other's arms, and like Juno's swans are never 
seen apart. 

The social instinct in ripening severs and 
withdraws, as the tree ascends and matures by 



OUR ELECT. 43 

shedding its lower limbs. Its history is parallel 
to that of reproduction, where the count les- 
sens as the type rises, until, on the best levels, 
the births narrow to three, two, and one. Nat- 
ure mounts by limitations, or attempts less to 
accomplish more. The heart obeys this law of 
ascent, and comes to the best relations by a 
system of exclusions, as the orator is successful 
with emphasis by sparing on the mass of words 
and concentrating on a few. That which is 
finite can be great only in this way. And so 
we can readily agree with Aristotle, who said, 
" He who boasts a multitude of friends hath 
none ; " or, with Saadi, in his witty observation, 
that " friendship, like iron, is fragile, if ham- 
mered too thin ; and as for heat, holds it not." 

Companionship begins with the crowd on the 
sidewalk, as Ave have said ; but only begins. 
With a few there is not even this dawn of fel- 
lowship, as of the first gray of the morning. 
Eather, they stand in the mass as repellant 
units. They are the victims of some idiosyn- 
crasy or whim or conceit that banishes them to 
their own centres. At the other end of the 
scale are those who, like Socrates and Gold- 
smith, have their arms around everybody with 
the utmost good- will. They greet humanity as 



44 AT OUR BEST. 

a lover his beloved. They are apparently as 
impartial as the sun, and as broad in their benig- 
nity as Providence. Shall we say they have some 
higher gift, and see the beautiful human type 
under every diversity ? Or do they not, rather, 
hold all human traits in such happy distribution 
in their own characters that they instantly find 
points of sympathy with all they meet ? But 
most of us find in the crowd only glances of 
fellowship, the genial contact and recognition 
of a few eyes, the magnetic touch of now and 
then a heart, like sunny beams through rifts 
in a cloud. 

Between kindred souls there takes place at 
sight a fine flow of feeling, a mutual intelli- 
gence and adoption, which lingers like a poetic 
thrill. There are choice faces to be met in every 
crowd, which stay in our memory like an image 
impressed on the eye. They come again in our 
dreams. A regret steals over us at their passing, 
as if some damage had been done to our hearts. 
They invest the sidewalk with a charm, and 
often we may be forced to forsake a circle of 
dull acquaintances to enjoy this better com- 
panionship of strangers on the street or in the 
public assembly. 

The wayside companionships, when drawn 



OUR ELECT. 45 

into closer relations, as may happen in travel, 
or at the house of a mutual friend, or at an 
evening's entertainment, or in the chance ways 
of life, will eclipse, for the moment, the glow 
of better grounded friendships. They are the 
rare outbursts of the social nature — rapt cli- 
maxes of thought and feeling. In the meeting 
of two strangers timed to each other is found, 
no doubt, the most perfect poetry and power of 
our social life. All the tides are set in full 
flow. It is a holiday with our faculties and 
sentiments. A new companion of this elect 
order we meet as on Olympus or in Elysian 
Fields. For, let it be said, these are times and 
opportunities to enjoy anew what is at length 
excluded among old friends. Long intimacy 
narrows the topics, demands silences, forbids 
even our pet points. " Go to ! I have heard 
this before," is the unspoken verdict that will 
be respected. The old is old, between friend 
and friend ; and we must spare on these things, 
and pass on to the new, though it be to discuss 
the latest nothings of the clay, and prognosti- 
cate what idle events are due to-morrow. Our 
best story must not be retold to the same party, 
however intimate the relations, — indeed, be- 
cause they are intimate. The familiar theme 



46 AT OUR BEST. 

may burn in our heart, but it must be kept 
from the tongue, as a lover painfully hides his 
maiden's name. But we may draw the gate at 
these casual interviews, and hold nothing back ; 
for then all is new. And here, moreover, is 
the charm of two lives in a state of mutual 
transfer of ideas and sympathies: it is a fine 
game of surprises. What delight to watch the 
new phases as they come ! What joy in this 
fresh chapter of life which we are writing out 
for each other ! Let us run to our journal and 
make record of another ecstasy, and declare for 
the hundredth time that one more ordinary 
mortal has proved to be an angel ! In look- 
ing over my old diary, the other clay, I was 
attracted by the heading, " A happy discov- 
ery in a horse-car!" which proved to be the 
rare wit and virtue of a man I had long known 
at a distance, only to deem him a very common 
specimen of our race. 

But whilst in some things this is the social 
climax, it is not of that perfect order which the 
best degree of friendship secures. The meteor 
is a bad substitute for the fixed star, however we 
run to greet it for the moment. The heat of 
the new birth is something suspicious, as sug- 
gesting a speedy burning out. Is there not a pas- 



OUR ELECT. 47 

sional play in these wayside intoxications ; and, 
in most cases, a slight dash of mutual conceit 
and curiosity ? Have we not exchanged too fine 
portraits, and left each other somewhat deceived 
by disclosures better than our average ? Has it 
not been a meeting in costume, and a hiding of our 
rags ? I know I am not what my chance com- 
panion takes me to be ; and he appears to me in 
a holiday disguise. The dealing is not wholly 
plain and fair, like that which takes place 
when old friends meet and have on their every- 
day qualifications ; and the truest conscience 
would like to say at parting, " I am not the 
angel you fancy I am." Have we not a secret 
wish, or something like it, not to meet these 
parties again on whose easy faith we have so 
finely imposed, lest next time they will see 
through us and accuse us ? Would we like to 
have these dupes know the real facts ? 

The companionships among neighbors, and 
in clubs, coteries, churches, and every kind of 
permanent and close association, have still better 
qualities. If there is not in them so much of 
an April freshness, there is more of an October 
ripeness. The views of each other are broader, 
the familiarity is more assured and justified, 
and the good-will and mutual interest are the 



48 AT OUR BEST. 

more solid and refined products of time. These 
are happy free-masonries, and enchantments 
of the social landscape which do not pass away 
whilst you are gazing. We miss any face from 
these groups. We ask with anxiety, where is 
the old man whose benignant face has daily 
passed our window for years, and now is seen 
no more ? as if our familiar, friendly glances had 
mutually surrendered us to each other. We 
follow any of these better known and better 
loved parties in their travails or travels with our 
benisons. We hasten to exchange sympathies 
and congratulations. We pause as we read 
their names in the daily papers, and would 
know how it fares with them. We gladly con- 
fess our debt to them for the speed and joy of 
many an hour which had else been wingless and 
sober. And from this better grade of fellowship 
usually springs the highest and best. 

But what is friendship ? What is this final 
state of the social instinct which has been for 
ages the subject of discussion, as if it trans- 
cended easy definition, and the theme of song, 
as if it were entitled to the highest tribute and 
celebration ? What is this that one has called 
the " chief joy of souls " ? When does the swell- 
ing bud break into its perfect bloom ? A child 



OUR ELECT. 49 

may raise this question, but have we the man who 
is sure of his answer ? Of all the arrows shot by 
the host of archers at this old mark has any 
gone further than Cicero's ? His definition is 
virtually this : Friendship is the mutual embrace 
and intercourse of corresponding attributes, qual- 
ities, tastes, aspirations, with an absence from 
them of a jealous and envious egotism ; or it 
is the sweet accord of natures akin, and espe- 
cially of natures of a high order, cultivated, 
moral, generous, plain, stable, and with some 
degree of poetic sympathy. The first law is 
likeness, with elevation as a guaranty of a supe- 
rior type of amity, as diamonds are more perfect 
crystals than quartz ; and the second is unself- 
ishness or magnanimity, which admits two of a 
kind to come into full relations. " Whoever is in 
possession of a true friend," wrote this great Ro- 
man, " sees the counterpart of his own soul." 
And upon this note he rings repeated changes. 
He plants himself here like one who stands on 
hardpan. " A friend is another self," he adds ; 
and this saying has been quoted with favor by 
Montaigne, Shaftesbury, Sir Thomas Browne, and 
others. " Friendship is one soul in two bodies," 
is another of his happy hits, which the writers 
have freely adopted. And the origin of this 

4 



50 AT OUR BEST. 

state he announces in the following terms : " To 
have similar likes and dislikes is the first cement 
of friendship." 

But Cicero was not alone among the ancients, 
neither was he first, in holding this view. For 
in Plato's Gorgias, Socrates is set forth as say- 
ing, " To me every man appears to be most the 
friend of him who is most like him, — like to 
like, as the ancient sages say." Did he quote 
the priests of Isis, or whom ? In his fine chapter, 
" How to know a Flatterer from a Friend," 
Plutarch has said, " Friendship takes origin 
from a concurrence of like humors and incli- 
nations ; and the same passions, the same aver- 
sions and desires, are the first cement of a true 
and lasting friendship." " Equality and simi- 
larity," according to Aristotle, " constitute 
friendship ; " whilst Homer, in the translation 
which I have at hand, is thus rendered : — 

" Heaven with a secret principle endued 
Mankind to seek their own similitude." 

Every hero knows every hero from primal 
sources of wisdom : they see eye to eye, as we 
say ; and there arise mutual interest and esteem 
on the most central conditions, which will ripen 
to a fine friendship with a heroic flavor if circum- 



OUll ELECT. 51 

stances should permit. Great generals of the 
opposition would rush into each other's arms and 
hobnob on the eve of battle, but for pruden- 
tial ends. On personal grounds they would 
each give the victory to the other. The ancient 
legends are for ever pairing and grouping the 
heroes. In the Norse theology Valhalla is 
their common heaven, or, rather, the heaven 
of as many of them as are slain in battle. The 
valiant brotherhood were invited to that high 
and exclusive fellowship for which their common 
nature and experience so eminently fit them. 
Where but in the Court of King Arthur, and at 
his famous Round Table, 

" Heroes to heroes facing," 

should we look for the intrepid Sir Kay, Sir 
Galahad, Sir Tristram, Sir Gawain, Sir Bo- 
hort, Sir Lionel, and all the elect of daring 
blood ? Their union is in full accord with the 
first law of Nature, and begotten of it, and is 
a supreme joy. It is magnetic, and sweet as 
nectar. And with not less of reason did the 
Orientals marry their fabulous hero and hero- 
ine : " Who but Temeenah, the daughter of 
the Shah, and tamer of lions and tigers, should 
be wife to Roostem, that makest the air to weep 



52 AT OUR BEST. 

with his sword; in dread of whom the eagle 
ventures not to fly ; and who drawest the sea- 
snake out of the deep ? " The match is thus 
perfect, like the balance of the solar system, 
or the due equipoise of nations ; and we see, at 
a glance, what a train of interchanging intelli- 
gences, respects, and sympathies must follow. 
Unlikeness of tastes and habits and tempers is 
the rock on which the domestic ship is oftenest 
wrecked ; and Temeenah and Roostem are given 
as a high text to be applied to wedlock through 
all grades of society. 

Thus every quality knows and seeks its own, 
its fellow and peer ; that is, if the quality is itself 
high and self-respecting, and there is an absence 
of selfishness and jealousy. Hence, child takes 
to child, through mutual sparkle and innocence ; 
veteran to veteran, on grounds of well-earned 
laurels ; the pure to the pure, as sunbeams blend 
or angels go in flocks ; the plain and solid people 
to such as share a kindred good-sense and fair- 
dealing; and poet to poet, as Aubrey informs 
us that "there was a wonderful similarity of 
fancy between Beaumont and Fletcher, which 
caused that dearness of friendship between 
them." 

We will not stand pledged for the good-fellow- 



OUPv ELECT. 53 > 

ship of blacklegs, fribbles, fashionables, game- 
sters, politicians, speculators, or other self-seek- 
ers, by reason of any similarity between them. 
We will not guarantee the amity of a red-hair 1 
club because of this common color ; nor of a 
sewing-circle, because it is composed of only 
women ; nor of West Point graduates in the army, . 
because they have a kindred skill in military tac- 
tics. It is not a question of likeness without 
reference to rank; for where there is not self- 
respect, there cannot be mutual respect among 
those of a kind. We demur at Addison's state- 
ment, that " the friendships of the world are often 
confederacies in vice." For this divine league 
runs not so low. The perfect co-ordinations are 
worthy. Friends shall be able to look each 
other in the face without mutual crimination. 
We must not feel ashamed of our company, and 
have a desire to apologize and run. This high 
cohesion is as moral as gravitation or the Ten 
Commandments; and not, in any instance, a 
bond among rogues or rascals, who, for some 
paltry pittance, will desert as readily as they 
enlist. 

Beau Nash was badly fleeced by his sharp 
friends at York, who offered fifty pounds of his 
money back if he would stand a half-hour in a 



54 AT OUR BEST. 

sheet at the door of the cathedral. Whilst doing 
so, he was recognized by a priest, who rallied 
him on his strange behavior. The dupe replied 
that he was " doing a Yorkshire penance for 
having bad friends." But who will fare better 
that angles in this treacherous water? He who 
mates with sharpers, though he be himself a two- 
edged blade, must expect to do penance sooner 
or later. Nothing is to be counted on where 
there is absence of moral principle, — not the 
love of a mother, nor the affection of a father, 
nor the pledged fealty of a church-member. It 
is virtue that gives soundness and security to 
all the sentiments ; and he who has compan- 
ions without it should have buttons to his 
pockets. 

There is no love like self-love. But this is 
among the high-minded and virtuous. For who 
of these does not prize his own nature and 
tastes and hopes, to that extent that he would 
not exchange them for any others ? Who would 
sell himself out for any mortal he knows ? We 
are all egotists to this degree, that we would 
not barter our lots, all in all, with crowned heads 
and millionn aires. Especially the worthy will 
have self-regards that shall set them at the very 
centre of the universe. And so there will be no 



OUR ELECT. 55 

extension of love like that which shall remain 
most like self-love. 

That to which my heart is most given in my 
own nature is that to which in another my chief 
interest turns, and my highest attachment will 
be transferred. I vibrate, like a sensitive string, 
to my favorite notes, by whomsoever they are 
struck. I embrace my own in all, since that 
is most dear to me. For this reason, my new 
friends will seem like my old ones, and as if 
I had long known them. My preference will 
be for a common type of character ; and my com- 
panions would be instantly at home with each 
other. I cannot make any choice but from the 
same general rank, and any others would be 
speckled birds in this flock : it is a process of 
self-extension ; and my last friendship is, there- 
fore, not a new one, for the reason that the same 
essential qualities reoccur in it. I know not 
how to escape from my own nature in any act, 
' and much less in any act of the heart ; and so 
my friend is but some more of my own person- 
ality. I have always known him, although I 
first saw him yesterday ; and if he leaves me 
to-morrow, he is still mine, as carrying my iden- 
tity and sympathy. We have nothing new for 
each other, save a few indifferent scraps of 



56 AT OUR BEST. 

autobiography; but that which is old between 
us is never old, but, like beauty, it is youthful 
and a joy for ever. 

If I never fall sick of myself, — as I shall not, 
if I am moral, and have elevation of mind, and 
feel just and gladdening relations to the uni- 
verse ; if I am vital and real to myself, — then 
shall I never fall sick of my friend, who is like 
me. These qualities can never weary me for 
their fitness to my being. They are like beauty 
to the eye, sweet sounds to the ear, or adapted 
viands to the taste. The relations are perfect 
and charming. Without end my friend shall 
bring me to my better self, and I shall recall 
him from his eccentric and cheap associations to 
his true centre ; and the sun shall sooner cease 
than this mutual glow of our hearts, so long as 
we remain what we are. For there is no monot- 
ony in the interplay of like and like on this plane, 
but a perpetual miracle of newness. Human 
nature never tires at the top, but only at its 
base. It is passion that cloys, as somewhat that 
is rank and from the ground ; but the finer 
sentiments, which are one with divinity, will for 
ever rejoice in themselves. 

The clue to a better circle of friends is a 
better self-qualification. We shall be admitted 






OUK ELECT. 57 

to the rank to which we belong, being ourselves 
the card which entitles to admission. Merit 
holds the key to all the locks, and is sure of its 
welcome in the end, whatever passwords and 
masonries parties may affect at first, or however 
coldly they ask, "Who are you? " The saying 
is older than our era, and expresses the fine 
sense of the Hindoos, that " no stone is left out 
of the wall that is fitted for a place in it." We 
shall at length be known and taken for what we 
are, and our friends will be as our deserving. It 
is never caprice or custom which determines the 
final vote, but the fitness of things. Make a 
better character, and you will find better friends. 
Gabriel himself and his peers are waiting to greet 
you in their likeness, and will then yield their 
best hours to your presence. 

The exceptions to this rule of like and like 
are only seeming ; and the common saying, that 
" opposites attract," will not bear the test. 
There can be no friendships of unlikeness, be- 
cause no key of understanding and no basis of 
unity ; but there may be friendships of less and 
more of the same kind, and of that which is com- 
mon to parties otherwise opposite. Old Thomas 
Hobart used to say of verses " written in sacke, 
yet not in sense, nobody can understand them 



58 AT OUK BEST. 

unless he be first drunke." The point of unity 
must be secured in all cases where a fair criti- 
cism is to be rendered. And how much more, 
where heart and heart are to enter into mutual 
understanding and sympathy ! 

Oil and water will not mix ; but introduce an 
alkali which will pervade both, and you have a 
common quality whereby to draw on a union. 
Thus, Goethe and Schiller were, in the main, con- 
trasts. The biographer of the former says : " One 
has the majesty of repose, the other of conflict. 
Goethe's frame is massive, imposing, — he seems 
much taller than he is: Schiller's frame is dis- 
proportioned, — he seems less than he is. Goethe 
holds himself stiffly erect : the long-necked Schil- 
ler ' walks like a camel.' Goethe's chest is like 
the torso of Theseus : Schiller's is bent, and has 
lost a lung . . . Goethe wrote in the freshness 
of morning, entirely free from stimulus : Schiller 
worked in the feverish hours of the night, stimu- 
lating his languid brain with coffee and cham- 
pagne. One was the representative of realism, 
and the other of idealism. Goethe always strove 
to let Nature have free development, and pro- 
duce the highest forms of Humanity ; Schiller 
always pining for something greater than Nat- 
ure, wishing to make men demigods." And yet 






OUR ELECT. 59 

these great poets were great friends. For there 
was still a likeness hidden away at the centre 
of their unlikeness. They were both poets, 
and shared in common high religious instincts. 
They were alike dedicated to art. They were 
both inspired with a generous desire to please 
and elevate their kind by their labors. And 
our author acids : " The phases of their devel- 
opment had been very similar, and had brought 
them to a similar standing-point. They both 
began rebelliously ; they both emerged from 
titanic lawlessness in emerging from youth 
to manhood." The secret of their lofty and 
charming fellowship is no secret. And there 
is ever a similar explanation where apparent 
social inaptitudes are- found in company. 

The perfect friendships of men and women, 
where custom and constraint have not inter- 
fered, would seem to show that differing degrees 
of the same kind are favorable when there is a 
mutual balance of superiorities ; that is, where 
each finds in the other a complement of self. 
The dominant in each awakens and gladdens 
the latent in each. There takes place a cross- 
ing of sentiments ; and the new selfhood thus 
set into active play is the precious miracle 
of this intercourse. The man is wrought into 



60 AT OUR BEST. 

her gentleness and grace, and is charmed, like 
one awaking from sleep to a June morning. 
The woman has her will and energy aroused 
by his greater forcefulness, and is delighted, 
like one who finds fresh treasure. It is the 
new birth and spring-time of dormant traits ; 
the play of unused and well-rested powers ; 
the sweet sense of versatility in our perform- 
ance ; the pride of a discovery to our credit, — 
that we are each of us two instead of one, two 
in one, as the tragedian likes to find that he is 
at home in comedy, and the droll would feel that 
he is equal to the role of Richard. Dr. Johnson 
enjoyed in himself a milder side when he visited, 
as he so often did, Mrs. Thrale ; and she found, 
to her delight, that she was wiser and stronger 
in his company. So I regard all the famous or 
obscure friendships of men and women as the 
response of like to like, but ordinarily of less to 
more. It is a mutual sense of new life. It is 
another world than the one we mostly live in, 
but one to which we have native or constitu- 
tional passports. But friendship, in its perfect 
degree, will scarcely be tolerated, in an unchaste 
age, between the sexes ; and, in all but the 
latest stages of life, its tendency must be to pass 
into the passional glow of love. Some one has 



OUR ELECT. 61 

said, " There are no friends between sex and 
sex, but only acquaintances and lovers." 

But while this high relation is that of kindred 
spirits, time supplies some elements to its per- 
fection. But who, in these days of haste, has 
time to give to making friendships ? We exact 
a price that our age is not ready to pay. " Sell 
us what you can for money, but offer us nothing 
which is to be bought with patience, stability, 
waiting in the same relations for results to ripen, 
holding our serenity and openness year after 
year toward the same parties. For we must 
whirl with the whirling world, and keep pace with 
the swift round of sensations." Well, as you 
will ; but there can be no ideal companionship 
where Time is not permitted to set his seal and 
harden his wax. Age is needful to this as to 
wine. George the Third said he liked his 
old friends and old shoes best. Time is the 
universal finisher of all jobs well begun, — adds 
still higher and better degrees to our best work, 
rubs down the sharpness of its lines, overcomes 
the rawness of its tone. The artist says when 
he lays aside his brush, at the end of his task, 
" My picture will be more perfect in ten years 
than it is to-day." Age and use mellow the 
violin, and put the last degree of perfection 



62 AT OUR BEST. 

in its tone, as no manufacturer at Cremona or 
Apsam knows how to do. We are conform- 
ists, and constituted to reactions, — by slow 
degrees. How custom conquers and has its 
way with us ! Never will we adopt this ugly 
style ! but next year we are reconciled, and have 
it on, as if a new sense had been induced in the 
eye. Who can parry the spirit of the age ? We 
all carry the local tj-pe ; and, if you have good 
eyes, you shall see that this is a New-Englander, 
and that a Jerseyman, and the other a Buck- 
eye. "Ah! sir, I see you are from Nova Sco- 
tia," we say, as one from that quarter hails us 
for direction or the time of the day. The an- 
cients thought they explained Ulysses by saying 
that he was brought up in " craggy Ithaca." 
Who can elude this general influence? Who 
can escape the climate and the land ? There is 
an invisible spirit abroad in nature and society, 
to which we give in conformity, at length, the 
very bones of our bodies, our complexions, and 
the fashion of our souls. How much more, 
then, shall friendship work upon us in its own 
interest to effect the likeness in which it lives 
and has its being ! Every day will add to 
the degree of its cohesion ; every year, every 
decade is another and longer chapter in this 



OTTK ELECT. 63 

sweet story of blending hearts. Tastes gradu- 
ally conform. Virtues assume finer aspects 
when tried and proved ; and even defects, if 
not too glaring, become at length enchanted, and 
what would we do but copy and share them ? 
We have it from Plutarch that Plato's friends 
at length admired and imitated his stoop, Aris- 
totle's his lisp, and Alexander's the inclination 
of his neck and rapidity of his speech. All the 
heart's heroes are beautiful to the eye and imi- 
table. Friendship is a contagion ; we invite its 
precious inoculations: it is a reciprocity, and 
insures an interchange of talents and tenden- 
cies, and a mutual adoption of tears and joys. 
Familiarity draws on sympathy and oneness be- 
tween souls, as between us and the hills which 
come to be something more and better than 
hills ; or between us and a house, — say the 
one we were born in, and lived in for those 
twenty wonderful years, which is now more 
than a house, even a shrine, or castle, that we 
would guard with bayonets if it were needful. 
Time ripens confidence, and we dare reckon on 
this heat between us as we dare trust the sun, 
and shall count on his coming and smiling to- 
morrow morning, because he has been steady 
and true so long. After five or ten years of con- 



64 AT OUR BEST. 

sistency and devotion, it is time to think we 
have found a friend ; but we shall be still better 
assured in twenty years, in forty doubt will 
have ceased. 

But why strive to tell the extent and variety 
of Time's contributions to friendship ? Is not 
the whole universe ascending from age to age, as 
if in duration there were held in store the bet- 
ter and the best? Eternity has its arms full 
wherewith to reward our patience and perse- 
verance. 

A true friendship is its own end, and need 
look to no other. What would we but just to 
be together ? That is first and chief. What we 
want mainly is our friend, not the chaff he brings 
us about matters and things, although that at 
his hand is something superior, like river water 
from the Jordan or Nile. We seek him for him- 
self, and not his offices, which are the mere 
shadows of his presence. The moment we set 
ourselves in the relation of mutual conveniences, 
we are degraded, being no more friends, but 
self-seeking parasites. Amity is as essential to 
this compact as beauty to a picture ; whilst 
service is incidental, and not at all to be reck- 
oned on. This alliance is for its own sake. 
We make ourselves over to each other, as free 



OUR ELECT. 65 

as genuine lovers of selfish calculations; and 
the overplus of mutual uses is that free gra- 
tuity which Heaven entails upon every exalted 
relation. First love, and then whatever comes 
after. First the feast of hearts, and then a 
little tea and toast for the stomach. First a 
sacred evening, and then such a bed as the 
house affords. My friend, I want thee, not 
thine ! Thy highest eloquence is thy pres- 
ence, and not thy speech ! The heart is a royal 
gift ; but the hands can only bring some cheap 
trumpery. " If a man should importune me," 
said Montaigne, " to give the reason why I loved 
him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed 
than by making answer, because it was he, be- 
cause it was I." 

We seek some things for our sake alone. The 
act is selfish, having in it no reciprocal or 
returning impulse. Much of our activity is 
legitimately void of generous prompting, since 
we deal with dead matter which can only serve 
us, and not we it. Here are oranges to be 
sucked, and thrown away; almanacs for this 
year's news of the moon and tides, and next 
year's waste-basket ; garments for their warmth 
and gloss, and then for the ragman ; and a thou- 
sand and one elements, — gold, silver, copper, 

5 



66 AT OUR BEST. 

iron, earth, air, water, electricity, odor, &c, — 
which serve, but cannot be served. Our 
education is a little dangerous, like handling 
fire-arms. And it would seem that, with some, 
this self-referring habit has become a mastery 
and carries the whole nature along with it, — 
for they make friends in the same way. Their 
smiles are selfish fascinations and cruel lures ; 
their civilities are tentacles ; their sweet words 
are some mere notes of the sirens, and like 
Ulysses' sailors we need wax in our ears ; 
their friendship is a velvet paw : that is, they 
want not you, but yours. It is a stroke of 
policy based on calculation, like the solution of 
a problem in algebra, — with politicians, their 
ruling passion, so that you know they will ad- 
dress the Saurians as "my friends and honored 
fellow-citizens ; " with many merchants, a sly 
approach to your pocket, or in the interest of 
large and paying sales ; with the vain, a buying 
of more praise with less ; and with a somebody 
who crosses every one's path, a worming into 
one's good graces to command secrets, influences, 
gifts, feathers to soften a nest, and access to 
desired ends and elevations. The rich and 
powerful are especially exposed ; and an ancient 
king seems to have been justly wise, who had 



OUB, ELECT. . 67 

all his friends drunk once a year and thus trans- 
parent : — 

" Now do I play the touch, 
To try if thou be current gold indeed." 

There are natures, we must believe, so quick 
and true that the least sham of friendliness, or 
a looking beyond itself, is instantly detected and 
barred out. They scent the enemy ; and this 
is especially true of women except where love 
impairs their moral sensibility. But most of us 
are accessible through our greedy appetite for 
regards, and fall easy victims to this craft. Ti- 
mon's friends were all leeches, but with his self- 
biassed eye, watching eagerly for laudatory signs, 
he saw it not so : they covered him with smiles, 
but with an eye to his head butler ; their fine 
protestations meant only more of his dinners 
and festivals, or more of his checks, to satisfy 
their imperious creditors and buy off the sheriffs, 
or to carry their last financial ventures to suc- 
cessful ends. We have all had our foot in this 
inviting trap, and know the friendship that is an 
artifice, and not its own sufficient end. Judas 
betrayed us with a kiss. For a puff we suffered 
ourselves to be taken in and done for. The 
artful refer to our " well-known charity," and 
we pass them our pocket-book. But let us 



68 AT OUB BEST. 

set it down as the last limit of baseness to have 
our friends as pawns to play our game with. 
Let us take our shoes off, and come to them 
with uncovered heads and the most perfect de- 
gree of sincerity, as we approach our altars of 
prayer. 

The true end is our friend ; and we shall only 
think how we can serve him, and not how 
he can serve us. Friendship is no pound-for- 
pound policy ; or, as Cicero has well said in his 
masterly essay, " It scorns to poise the bal- 
ance so exactly equal that nothing shall be 
placed in the one scale without its equivalent 
in the other." It may ask a favor, but only with 
a spirit that would return a greater, so that its 
asking is in spirit a conferring ; whilst its main 
impulse is to bestow with an utter disregard of 
return, as the flower blooms and the sun shines, 
and all nature is free expenditure. The eye 
looks from this mount only one way. The law 
of this height is overflow, as Byron said, in some 
of his moods, " I must write or burst." 

The world has no better text to this point 
than the old story of Damon and Pj^thias, which, 
to preserve its best flavor, I quote as it stands 
in the " Percy Anecdotes." " Damon being 
condemned to death by Dionysius, Tyrant of 



OUR ELECT. 69 

Syracuse, obtained liberty to visit his wife and 
children, leaving his friend Pythias as a pledge 
for his return, on condition that if he failed 
Pythias should suffer in his stead. At the 
appointed time, Damon failed in appearing, 
and the tyrant had the curiosity to visit Py- 
thias in prison. ' What a fool you was,' said 
he, ' tb rely on Damon's promise ! How could 
you imagine that he would sacrifice his life 
for you or for any man ? ' ' My lord,' said Py- 
thias, with a firm voice and noble aspect, ' I 
would suffer a thousand deaths, rather than my 
friend should fail in any article of honor. He 
cannot fail. I am confident of his virtue, as I 
am of my own existence. But I beseech the 
gods to preserve his life. Oppose him, ye winds ! 
Disappoint his eagerness, and suffer him not to 
arrive till my death has saved a life of much 
greater consequence than mine, — necessary to 
his lovely wife, to his little innocents, to his 
friends, to his country. Oh ! let me not die the 
cruellest of deaths in that of my Damon.' Dio- 
nysius was confounded, and awed with the mag- 
nanimity of these sentiments. He wished to 
speak: he hesitated; he looked down, and re- 
tired in silence. The fatal day arrived. Pythias 
was brought forth, and with an air of satisfaction 



70 AT OUB BEST. 

walked to the place of execution. He ascended 
the scaffold, and addressed the people. ' My 
prayers are heard : the gods are propitious ; the 
winds have been contrary. Damon could not 
conquer impossibilities : he will be here to- 
morrow, and my blood shall ransom that of my 
friend.' As he pronounced these words a buzz 
arose ; a distant voice was heard ; the crowd 
caught the words, and ; Stop, stop, executioner ! ' 
was repeated by every person. A man came at 
full speed. In the same instant he was off his 
horse, on the scaffold, and in the arms of Pythias. 
1 You are safe ! ' he cried ; ' you are safe, my 
friend ! The gods be praised, you are safe ! ' Pale 
and half speechless, in the arms of his Damon, 
Pythias replied in broken accents : c Fatal haste, 
cruel impatience. What envious powers have 
wrought impossibilities against your friend ! but 
I will not be wholly disappointed. Since I can- 
not die to save you, I will die to accompany you.' 
Dionysius heard and beheld with astonishment. 
His eyes were opened ; his heart was touched ; 
and he could no longer resist the power of virtue. 
He descended from his throne, and ascended the 
scaffold. ' Live, live, ye incomparable pair ! 
Ye have demonstrated the existence of virtue, 
and consequently of a God who rewards it. Live 






OUR ELECT. 71 

happy, live revered ; and as you have invited me 
by your example, form me by your precepts to 
participate worthily of a friendship so divine.' " 
Who can tell the value of a friend ? Diderot 
said of the Abbe Galiani, " He is a treasure 
in rainy days ; and if the cabinet-makers made 
such things, everybody would have one in the 
house." u Mr. Walpole is to me spirits of harts- 
horn," said Lady Townsend. " It is your destiny 
to inspire, mine to be inspired," said Ballanche 
to Madame Recamier. " Your voice is music to 
my soul," said Alexander the Emperor of Russia 
to Madame de Kriidener. " I protest against 
your long silences," wrote Madame Swetchine to 
her priestly friend Lacordaire. These are notes 
from the chorus. But what wonder is too great 
for the presence of a true friend to accomplish ? 
The doctor has no such medicine for the head- 
ache. Punch is a quack in comparison, for the 
treatment of the blues. A north-west wind is 
not so good to clear the fog from the mind, and 
set all things in a bright light. It was a doc- 
trine of the Cabalists that an " angel who spends 
seven days on earth becomes opaque : " it is a 
doctrine with all the world, that he who comes 
to a wise and virtuous friend is speedily aflame 
with light. 



72 AT OUR BEST. 

When goodness attracts us, policemen and 
prisons may be spared, and sermons and prayers 
will have chiefly a devotional value. But akin 
to virtue, as a lure to the right paths, is the 
regard we have for a worthy friend. We are 
debtors to our elect. We live to the eye and 
heart of our friends, — who knows how much ? 
We miss their moral bracing among strangers ; 
and must it be confessed that only one man in 
ten can safely visit Paris or New York alone ? 
Affection breeds a finer sense of justice ; and 
only the lover of the whole race is equal to 
courtesy everywhere, and would be as true to 
Sandwich Islanders as to his next-door neigh- 
bors. But love is also a spur to ambition. He 
who has a circle of true friends, who make his 
triumphs their joy, whose pulses quicken when 
he plucks victory from high places, has some- 
thing more to live for than the vagabond or 
hermit, who is severed from the interest of his 
kind. All flowers bloom and blush, say the 
Orientals, to glorify the sun. 

The generosity of friendship where the 
worldly conditions are unequal needs to be 
managed with great delicacy and discretion, 
and often checked ; since it may subject our 
other self to undue stress or humiliation. We 



OUR ELECT. 73 

must impose no heavy burdens on our friends, 
and need to see that generosity, in some cases, 
is rather in withholding than conferring, as spar- 
ing a bitter sense of dependence and undis- 
charged obligation. When benefactions are 
unequal between friends, as from rich to poor, 
it requires rare management to sustain the del- 
icate and perfect balance of relations. The case 
is hopeless unless the emphasis be steadily held 
on the social qualities, — the fellowship of hearts 
and the equal worth of souls. The money-test 
must be wholly set aside and forgotten, or the 
rich must bring his riches as if they were no 
more his than his friend's. It is a good fortune 
when all the conditions are level, and gifts, save 
those which are for tokens and not values, are 
out of order ; or when a superiority on one side 
is balanced by some superiority on the other ; 
for, in lieu of this, only the rarest felicity will 
serve to shield friendship from damage. 

And now we have our hand in, let us have 
another caution. Friendship may be selfish, not 
as between friend and friend, but between its 
circle of two or ten and those outside. It often 
subverts broader relations, and destroys a com- 
prehensive justice and courtesy. According 
to Aristotle, " Those friendships which are 



74 AT OUR BEST. 

most celebrated are between two only ; " but 
these two must not be too exclusive at the 
party and before the public. Our darlings 
must part from each other's arms when they 
entef company. They must take stock in hu- 
manity, and hide their intense duality as some- 
what that is invidious in the social circle, since 
it is a virtual and uncomplimentary declaration 
that beyond two letters the rest of the alphabet 
is quite uninteresting, and to be set aside. And 
is it not, moreover, a breach of honor to accept 
an invitation to the party, and not join the party 
and further its ideal unity and spirit ? Should 
not Maggie and Mamie, who have not come out 
of their mutual relations for the evening, apolo- 
gize to the company before leaving it ? I regard 
the closest friendship a private interest, which 
we shall spare before the world to a large ex- 
tent, and adopt other obligations. This golden 
band must be unbuckled much of the time, or 
gracefully concealed, and we must be true to 
other ties. We must not buy friendship by sell- 
ing courtesy, but remain still unselfish, and re- 
cognize cordially and generously even the race 
itself; and our private affection, if truly wor- 
thy, will generate these expansions, as the 
mother in rightly loving her own child learns 



OUR ELECT. 75 

to love all children. If you would feel that 
you live among worthy men and women, make 
a study of the best specimens of the race. It 
is a happy discipline of the eye, giving it a 
quicker sense to detect the same traits in com- 
mon life thereafter. There is no monopoly of 
the virtues, as there are no equivalents for them. 
All the coal is not found at Newcastle ; and if 
there is * one hero and saint, there are many. 
And so our best friend should interpret and 
exalt humanity to us, and be a point of diver- 
gence for our love and polite considerations. 

In sailing on this famous stream — the Rhine 
of the heart — there is a Scylla and Charybdis 
to be shunned. A dainty attention disgusts the 
sensible, who are not pets to be stroked and 
caressed. It is to their credit to take them on 
trust, and treat their sentiment as strong and 
secure. But no more is a friend, because willing 
and forbearing, to be crushed into corners and 
put to low uses, and presumed upon and insulted 
at will. Let us surround him with due respects 
and courtesies, like those which guard the queen 
on her throne. 



III. 

DAILY SUNSHINE. 



" We must run glittering, like a brook, 
In the sunshine, or we are unblest." 

Wordsworth. 

M What's i' the air? — 
Some subtle spirit runs through all my veins, 
Hope seems to ride this morning on the wind, 
And joy outshines the sun." 

Proctor's Mirandola. 



/CHEERFULNESS differs from rapture as 
^^ humor from wit. It is a lower tone of 
that scale whose highest note is ecstasy. It is 
an every-day measure of gladness, and should 
be an affair of the kitchen, shop, and street, — 
the angel ever at our side, the sunshine always 
abroad ; whilst it takes the whole breadth of 
the morning, or evening, or mountain, favorably 
seen, and not a mere keyhole view, to draw on 
emotional overflows and outbursts of joy. One 
notices that even Niagara must have time and 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 77 

good subjects to gain a high victory ; nor can a 
great painting be caught on the run, as a boy 
takes his lunch, but yields its best effect only 
loftily and leisurely. There is no sublimity of 
ideas that can inundate and enchant us with 
bliss at every corner. And what serves to-day 
may fail to-morrow, as if Nature were an econo- 
mist of her power to thrill us, as parents hold 
rare privileges in some reserve from their 
children ; or she understands that the best 
would cease to be best if made common, as too 
much sweet sickens, and excess of pastime 
palls. 

We are strung to a lower key ; and the more 
we find our real nature, through culture and 
growth, the more we find this is so. Beauty, for 
example, is simple, to the extent of being inde- 
finable ; and the best taste in art will have 
neutral tints and low tones. The pictures and 
statues which are done to the approval and 
delight of the ages, and will always be in ad- 
vance of the times, are modest and plain. The 
truest and best livers avoid expense and topheavi- 
ness, and emphasize the ordinary and real. An 
advance of years is ever away from special feats, 
— holidays, shows, fireworks, and gingerbread, 
and all wild climaxes of emotion, which are so 



78 AT OUR BEST. 

precious to the raw ajid unripe youth, — toward 
good averages and fine eveiy-day moods. And 
what is civilization but a reduction of noisy and 
tempestuous aboriginal impulses, and a better 
observance of law and order, — an exchange of 
jungles for clearings, of allegories and mytholo- 
gies for a little more common sense, and of a 
wild chaos of passions for the perfect peace of 
high principles ? And do not these abatements, 
coming with the progress of man, seem to indi- 
cate that cheerfulness is a better staple grade of 
sensibility than ecstasy or rapture, — that the 
lower is really the higher tone, and the very soul 
of the celestial music ? 

It is something gained to have learned that 
a handful of modest violets, or a cluster of the 
trailing-arbutus for a button-hole, are better 
than a gaudy sunflower or pompous peony ; that 
the annuals outrank the century-plant ; that a 
plenty of tallow candles is superior to Bengal 
lights ; that a little sparkling water to our daily 
thirst, and plenty of beaded dew on the grass, 
and films of roseate mist floating in the sunset 
sky, and lakelets here and there in the landscapes, 
to the eye, are more than Niagara, which is not 
much to those who live by it, and would scarcely 
serve us any better. It is at least a practical 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 79 

point gained to have our ideal joys set thus 
within easier reach ; for how often have we led 
a barren chase after rapture, when we might 
easily enough have overtaken the finer and gen- 
tler degrees of cheerfulness, — as children watch, 
with chilled blood, for northern lights and com- 
ets, which come or stay as they list, and at best 
but rudely impress our senses, and are blind 
to the serene glow and spiritual sparkle of the 
stars, which they may enjoy who will, and night 
by night. 

Greatness condescends, and hides in lowly 
guises and scenes. Real kings like to flee from 
their thrones, and steal away into cottages and 
corners and forests, and have a rural delight and 
peace. It is a .mark of low breeding to count 
only on the remote and rare, and hold ourselves 
in waiting for the chariots and steeds of the sun ; 
as it was said by quaint Thomas Fuller that 
"it is no pastime with country clowns that 
tumbles and tosses not the whole body ; they 
think themselves not warm till they are all on 
fire-, and count it but dry sport till they swim 
in their own sweat." But angels go quiet, and 
are open to a legion of gentle pleasures and 
silent voices and secret charms. One's best 
idea of heaven is not of an Indian pow-wow or 



80 AT OUR BEST. 

old-fashioned camp-meeting, but of somewhat 
more private and free from uproar. 

Cheerfulness is more or less affected by mat- 
ters quite out of our reach, such as tempera- 
ment, the state of the nerves, climate, aspects of 
Nature, the falling out of circumstances ; and so 
far we can have nothing to say, since rhetoric or 
incantations will come too late to serve. These 
things will not be made to our order. If we are 
born Celts or Saxous, or of these parents and 
not of those, to that extent there is nothing to 
be said. Blood has got the start, and decides ; 
and a perfect chemical analysis should be able 
to announce of one red drop, " This has frolic in 
it, and is on the dance ; " and of another, " This 
reveals a coolness and a shade, as if generated 
in dark groves." The original length of our 
faces is a piece of fate^ and is to be taken for 
what it is, and made the best of by later care 
and painstaking, — as an artist would take a 
statue or picture at any given point, and spend 
his skill on the needed modifications. We 
are not our own makers, but may be our own 
menders. 

There is no denying it, — the stars dance over 
some cradles as they do not over others, and 
occult causes tell on our destiny. 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 81 

" All pleasant things Atrides doth adorn ; 
The merry genius smiled when he was born/ 

Plutarch said tliat " Crates, with only his scrip 
and tattered cloak, laughed out his life jocosely, 
as if he had been always at a festival." There 
are plenty of Merry- Andrews, with their mouths 
stretched from ear to ear, and their eyes full 
to the brim of ludicrous lights, always coming 
to the surface by birth and secret favor. We 
know not what happy bargain has been made in 
their behalf, but we know full well they con- 
stitute a laughing brotherhood, independent of 
any earthly rite of initiation that can be taken 
note of. Shall we say they have descended 
from some pre-existent merry club? or that 
some angel has volunteered to attend and tickle 
their noses ? 

But let us, who are not so divinely born, take 
a little Christian comfort in noting how these 
jocular zanies hold their risible gifts ever at 
the peril of falling out of order with them. 
They carry the dance beyond daylight, drag the 
festival to the funeral, and have the mirror of 
propriety broken in all directions ; for which 
they have to pay heavy — the heedless rogues ! 
— in the black coin of mortifications, apologies, 
heart-burnings, and more chances to stay away 

6 



82 AT OUR BEST. 

from refined circles. "No one," said Richter, 
" is more profoundly sad than he who laughs 
too much." Or, we should say, when frolic 
betrays poverty of fine feeling, and is a selfish 
zest, it is good fortune to escape it, and share 
a wiser and safer soberness. Drummond said 
severely of Ben Jonson, but we hope not truly, 
" He was given rather to lose a friend than a 
jest." But not without deserving has laughter 
a bad name for being a little wayward and 
reckless on occasions. The buffoon is never a 
man of heart, since he aims to cover you or your 
act with ridicule, and drinks his wine of delight 
at your expense. 

On the other hand, we are not to look for 
exemption from the effects of climate, weather, 
the face of Nature, or the play of fortune. We 
are constituted to reactions ; are made to feel 
acutely our relations ; are harps in the hands 
of the whole choir of harpers, who are on 
the ground before us, or in spite of us, and 
who will draw their own music in major or 
minor keys. We are not stoics, and cannot be. 
There is no such thing as indifference, save in 
the mere name. I gladly own to the happy 
sway of fair weather, with a wind west by north- 
west ; and I have to confess I have no philoso- 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 83 

phy or religion which enables me to enchant the 
clouds and chilly air that sweep out of the east, 
and make them as if they were not. I can, to 
a degree, sweeten every bitter, and will do my 
best ; but still that element is in the cup, and 
will appear to the taste. A dreary waste is not 
a park, and refuses to affect us so. Norway 
will not look like Italy to any pair of eyes that 
still have sanity in them ; nor can Norwegians 
be sunny and singing and laughing, like their 
brothers and sisters of the balmy South. We 
must not look for the most cheerful music and 
a fully happy art and literature, out of the tem- 
perate belt that girdles the earth. You must 
be an Oriental, bathed in opium atmospheres, 
and moved by Arabian or Hindoo skies, to reach 
that dreamy imagination which is the delight 
and glory of the East. The complexions of the 
world crop out on our faces, and who can help 
it? All the cosmetics we know of come too 
late. What is history but a record of the 
sway of scenes and events over the feelings ? 
and we should not expect the old Hebrews 
could draw from their harps or voices the same 
happy notes in captivity as in Canaan, nor that 
exiles should be as merry as citizens. The 
farmers heart must take somewhat of its tone 



84 AT OtTK BEST. 

from the seasons. Grief has an iron point, and 
leaves its mark in spite of faith and sympathy 
and the best sermons. 

But looking at these features of Nature and 
fortune, which cast forth shadows upon the 
spirit, as clouds darken the landscape, let us be 
slow to accuse Providence. The universe is 
created in the interest of cheerfulness ; and the 
slight qualifications, to a sufficiently broad view, 
are indifferent, like a moment less or more on 
or off eternity. Let us confide that the world 
is well made and well managed ; that it is a 
music-box, with no more minor notes than a 
perfect art requires. Nature is all benefits and 
blessings. All her dragons, look they never so 
rough, are to be mounted and ridden to a pur- 
pose. She is a faithful friend, because at once 
infinitely wise and infinitely good. She does 
her part to fill all the plates. Start your inven- 
tory of fine colors and forms, and where will 
you end ? What variety and profusion of flav- 
ors and relishes for this little tasting patch 
of the mouth ! And we well-nigh ask, in the 
moment of rapt thought, if God has neglected 
all else to attend to these things ! But no. The 
delights mount with the rank of desires and the 
power to appropriate the better and the best. 






DAILY SUNSHINE. 85 

There are finer furnishings for the finer nature, 
to the last limit of ascension. We rise but to 
reach greater riches and more precious relations ; 
and attainment still fosters hope. Everything 
is for the best, that is a native belonging to the 
universe : — 

" Our times are in God's hands, and all our days 
Are as our needs ; for shadow as for sun, 
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike 
Our thanks are due, since that is best which is." 

To insure cheerfulness, let us join Nature, and 
journey in her company, as we would join a wise 
and good friend who knows the best road, and 
is going our way, and will gladden the hours 
for us with genial communions. Joy will be 
found in sharing the spirit and method of the 
world, and not playing at cross-purposes ; in 
accepting and obeying the high dictations from 
head-quarters, and pushing aside our little ca- 
prices and whims. He is happy who happily 
obeys. For example, that workman has a sure 
source of cheer w T ho takes his hint from gravi- 
tation, and works with and by it, in daily won- 
der at its generous assistance, and not against 
it. The farmer sings, as he well may, who times 
and chimes with the seasons and soils, planting 
in the spring, and the seed that will grow ; but 



86 AT OUR BEST. 

how if he disregard these submissions, and sets 
his May forward into mid-summer, and plants 
cotton where he should corn ? It will be to our 
pleasure and content if we keep our hearths 
cool in summer and kindle our fires on them 
in winter; if we ask the weather what we 
shall wear ; consult our foot for the size of our 
boot; accept the invitation of our stomach to 
dinner; and respect the night-hours for sleep. 
Nature has settled it in her wise councils, ages 
back, how it shall be in these matters, and in all 
others, if a perfect cheerfulness is to be looked 
for ; and nine-tenths of our miseries are the 
fruits of being out of joint and disobedient. We 
wander from her road, and lose or refuse her 
step and swing. We are not like the good rider, 
who rises and falls gracefully with his horse ; 
nor the good seaman, who rolls with his rolling 
ship ; nor the good dancer, who minds the tune 
and feels constant happy relations to tone and 
time. On the contrary, we take the world, 
whose oscillations and timings are yet perfect, 
as with a heedless or conceited or criminal 
perversity, and find our situations painful and 
cheerless. 

From the .grain of dust to the soul, and the 
seraph, and the Supreme, there reaches the king- 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 87 

dom and sway of law ; and a foregone decision, 
perfect as geometry, or as Infinite Love, how af- 
fairs shall proceed to the end of peace and glad- 
ness. The right tracks are laid. The grooves were 
anciently cut. The lights are turned on. The 
engines are happy hits, with all the gearing made 
to order. And the command has gone forth, 
and goes forth evermore, to enter here and 
advance and be glad. And will we go that 
way ? It is through a boundless paradise, and 
we shall sing paean out of full hearts. Or will 
we go another ? It will be through an Infer- 
num, and our music shall be a long and bitter 
wail. There is daily sunshine for them who are 
wise to the conditions, and wear furs in the arc- 
tic regions and white pants or dresses in Florida. 
They will be happy who regard their purses and 
preferences, and their fitness generally, and not 
the habits of their neighbors, nor the advertise- 
ments of the newspapers, whether to visit, in 
vacation time, Italy, Saratoga, or Kennebunk, or 
stay at home. They are the happy men who are 
self-respecting and stand to their manliness, and 
sing bass, and fell forests, and take ships to sea, 
and fight battles when the enemy invades, and 
refuse to be tied up in aprons and mind nurseries ; 
and they the happy women who are womanly, 



88 AT OUR BEST. 

and, as they are made to do, gracefully double 
our civilization by supplying the feminine to 
balance the masculine, making the beauty equal 
the power, and keeping all the functions of good 
society, as Nature appoints, in full and fine 
play. Happy are they who honor their hearts, 
and the best habits of the world, and marry for 
love and the perfect home, and not for specu- 
lation in stocks, or the setting up of a tem- 
porary Turkish harem on free-love grounds. 
Happy are they whose religion is true to the 
soul, and a high and sacred freedom, and not 
a cramping tradition or fashion, and a misfit, 
like a Chinese shoe or an American waist. 

No one crosses Nature with impunity, or but 
to get a longer face for so doing. She delights 
in our company, and will punish us if we desert 
her. We join her but to overtake blessings and 
smiles, to which all her paths lead. The key 
to all joys is, not to contest her points, but to 
adopt them. Joy is for him who is in advance 
of fate on the same road, who obeys that he may 
command, and gets the better of necessity with 
liberty of the same kind ? 

The joyful success is to find our vein, and 
work in it. Our gifts are foreordinations which 
foreordain, and will bring us liberty and delight 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 89 

through their wise use. They will sing at their 
right tasks, which may be this or that or the 
other, — music, oratory, mending shoes, taming 
lions, practising black arts and legerdemain, mak- 
ing doors and sashes, or managing banks. By 
allowing our powers to foreshow our way, as the 
firefly lights its own path, or as the planet by its 
weight and speed determines its own orbit, we 
shall be sure of a cheerful on-going. Our careers 
will be agreeable to our being when they are 
births and outgrowths from it. The society that 
is free from mannerism is always agreeable to 
itself, whether rough or refined, as Nature loves 
her own atmosphere best. All is well and a 
source of delight, so long as the rustic keeps to 
his rusticity, and Jonathan does not allow a new 
suit of clothes to set him into false relations ; 
and Molly, the farmer's daughter, does not adopt 
some academy patois instead of her native tongue ; 
and all of us are true to what we are, and escape 
the cramps and frictions of assumed parts. All 
is charming and cheerful, so long as birds fly and 
fishes swim, and souls respect their spheres. 

If what is one man's meat is another man's 
poison, then they have a good fortune who find 
and feed from their native dish, to which their 
taste and stomach are fitted. Izaak Walton, 



90 AT OUH BEST. 

who had a piscatorial temperament, — which is 
about half-and-half laziness and love of nature, 
— was in bliss all the forenoon, at the end of a 
fish-pole, with a single nibble and no haul ; but 
a friend of his raved and broke his rod in disgust 
at the end of fifteen impatient minutes : which 
signifies that for cheer one should go fishing, and 
another should not. Some huntsmen, sharing all 
the fondness of their craft for this laborious but 
high sport, got Lord Burleigh to go on the chase. 
They decoyed him with high visions of sport, 
to which they honestly looked. But at the close 
of the day he said, " Take me again in such a 
fault, and I '11 give you leave to punish me." 
But to the gamesters it was a jolly run, and 
gave them stomach for their meat as well as 
meat for their stomach. 

All is well when our life is free and real and 
level to its nature. And he has good fortune 
who has so strong a bent for some craft or call- 
ing, so powerful a determination in his brain or 
hand, that he shall be surely brought to pursue 
the end to which he was elected before he was 
born. To him the da}^s will be angels. If we 
are on the best of terms with our tasks, we shall 
greet them every morning as we would our 
friends. 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 91 

In like manner our habits, which are securely 
fixed, and not in conflict with our better judg- 
ment, carry perpetual charms ; and it will be 
much wiser to keep the lifelong harness on than 
to cast it off, since relief is so often not relief, 
and our fine retreat is likely to be populous 
with miseries. There is a lesson for us in the 
famous anecdotes : that the retired barber, in his 
rich chateau, had to give a few free shaves daily 
for solace ; and the wealthy butcher, who had 
gone out of the business, was forced to compro- 
mise and kill one lamb or two a week that he 
might sleep well and endure the day. 

As we are in possession of a company of gifts, 
so must we realize a symphony of experiences 
and uses. Your unhappy genius, like Rousseau, 
Swift, Byron, Poe, or any of the moody legion, 
who dare not look at their razors, is paying 
the penalty of a too exclusive action, the blow- 
ing of a single pipe of the organ, which leaves 
many of his powers to disuse and unrest. The 
worldling is miserable, after the first heat of 
money-getting, in his neglect of his better being, 
which gold cannot buy off, nor estates bring 
into willing captivity: a higher nature sits 
enthroned, like a divinity, in the midst of his 
faculties, and disdains any such degrading bar- 



92 AT OUR BEST. 

gain or treaty; and this man must consent to 
be a whole man, or there shall be no full, sweet 
music of life for him. The monk loses his 
visions and peace and cheer, by forsaking his 
just relations ; and Benedict must come back 
from his rat-hole and sly corner, and live in all 
the open and broad ways of this world of God. 
There must be no thrumming on one string, but 
a drawing of harmonious strains from the whole 
harp. If we would see a thoroughly happy man, 
we must look for him among those of even devel- 
opment and diverse activity and experience ; 
for the one - idea and one - achievement man 
pays for his best success with a certain bit- 
terness. 

The sunny and joyous spirit of progress or 
furtherance merits an extended notice, since it 
involves so many delightful qualities, — such 
as a perpetual sense of newness, like having it 
always morning ; and of usefulness and honor ; 
and of glad companionship with the high 
genius of the universe, which is that of evolu- 
tion and advance. The curse of being is culmi- 
nation or solstice, or a stay in its processes and 
procedure. If we have overtaken our end, we 
shall wither like ripe leaves, or rot like ripe 
apples, by the law of our being ; and good cheer 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 93 

will be no part of our lot. He who would be 
no more than he is, and has ceased to feel the 
better attractions, and has fallen out of the 
flowing current, is nobody ; and to be counted 
out as alike void of use and gladness. We must 
live to some purpose. We must live a growing 
life, and have a report of progress whenever 
we read our daily journals, and be all the time 
cutting new notches to indicate advance. " I 
am suffocated and lost," said Margaret Fuller, 
" when I have not the bright feeling of pro- 
gression." Or, rather, life reproaches itself when 
at a stand-still. 

The charm and cheer of art are in its motion 
and furtherance. If it is not liquid and flu- 
ent, there is a sobered aspect, from which we 
instantly turn our eyes. No end must be suf- 
fered ; for that is fatal and gives a Chinese daub, 
full of sleep and death. Statues must be on the 
run, and pictures in the act of becoming what 
they are not, or they cannot hold us a moment, 
but repel us as with a look of decay or smell of 
mould. " Let us wait," said one, caught by this 
perfect and essential illusion, as he stood gazing 
at Rubens's great painting of the " Descent 
from the Cross," and was lost in the spirit of the 
scene, — " let us wait till they get him down." 



94 AT OUK BEST. 

Let us wait, we might say, for this painted haze 
is about to reveal illimitable mountain gran- 
deurs ; this portrait will tell vast depths of se- 
crets ; these angels are but the heralds of coming 
troops, just out of sight ; these clouds are sailing 
off, — don't you see them go ? — and we shall 
have blue sky soon ; and this painted cow and 
milkmaid we shall look for to-morrow, and expect 
to find one in the pasture among the grass and 
ferns, and the other among the pans in the dairy- 
room. Art is thus a becoming, is on the way, 
flows with nature, and is wreathed with the 
perpetual smile of newness ; or it is not art. 
Every true portrait must flatter, since we are 
none of us, to the painter, equal to what we are 
to ourselves ; besides it must show betterment, 
which is also true to us, or should be. The 
sculptured heads of some of the Roman Caesars, 
at the Boston Athenaeum, are of the very men 
we have been waiting for and not yet able to 
find. They are not historical and of dead men, 
but are full of advancement and happy anticipa- 
tion, — arrivals from coming heroic generations. 
And so the Greek Apollo and Venus are still 
ideal forms, and of the future, — awaken hope, 
but stir not memory. Indeed, were they not 
finished last night and set up this morning ? or 



J 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 95 

will not some great artist, centuries hence, awake 
out of a rare dream, and, finding chisel in hand 
and fresh dust on his apron, claim, in all hon- 
esty, that he wrought them ? It is thus all prog- 
ress and life in art ; and hence its joyful spirit 
and influence, for neither itself nor its disciples 
will ever grow old and sober. 

And so in Nature : the feeling soul soon dis- 
covers that the seasons of greatest gladness are 
those of greatest growth ; and that all lull is 
loss of joy. The happy hours of the day are 
when this queen is coming and going. It is the 
advancing spring which sounds the merriest 
notes of the year, and all is less tuneful in Sep- 
tember : the birds have dropped their songs with 
their tasks ; the lingering brooks give no music ; 
and the ripened and spent year is less vocal 
with gladness. How Nature strives, by gravi- 
tation and winds, to have her waters and clouds 
in motion, and bent on errands of grace and 
use, lest they sadden ! It is everywhere a con*- 
quest of circumferences, new circles encircling 
the old, the flowing of ends into beginnings ; 
and no finality or fixed limit whatever, — as if 
that were a misery to be shunned. The boy 
thinks there is but one horizon, which he sees 
just over yonder ; but the man finds there are 



96 AT OUR BEST. 

thousands, and believes that beyond the last is 
another. The universe is all graduation and 
mounting. First and lowest is melted lava, 
then sandstone, granite, drift, water, air, and 
electricity, and — who knows what ? There 
is no end to the ascension, no last round in the 
ladder ; and the German philosophers have the 
right of it in spirit, when they define the uni- 
verse as " an eternal becoming." Indeed, so 
choice is Nature of development, so ascending 
are her habits, that we half tremble to follow 
back the links of the coil, lest we fall on strange 
ancestors, whose acquaintance we would rather 
not make. 

And this high game of Art and Nature, al- 
ways striking out for new and better winnings, 
we also must play at, in our human sphere, 
if we would find and dwell in a like cheerful 
atmosphere. We must avoid stagnation and 
halting in our way, or suffer a secret sense of 
self-reproach and a weariness of spent condi- 
tions. Augustus was happy that he was able to 
say, " I found Rome a city of brick, and left it 
a city of marble." And we are all made glad 
by something to show for ourselves, having a 
fine property in what we have done. A suc- 
cessful day's work is a better pillow for the tired 






DAILY SUNSHINE. 97 

man than feathers. The cat brings her mouse 
for exhibition, and the dog is proud of the day's 
store of game, as others than Landseer can 
detect. Victory is magical, and inspires half 
the world with ambition, and the other half with 
pleasant recollections. But that we cannot hap- 
pily repose on old things of this kind, shows the 
necessity of progress, and the right use of every 
moment, to our joy. The success that was of 
yesterday is not quite the thing for to-day, but, 
on the whole, shames us if we hold such powers 
idle. I know of no more miserable object than 
the man who did something ten or twenty years 
ago, but has done nothing since except to tell of 
that. Memory becomes his perpetual accuser 
so, saying to him, " Thou art less and less a 
man." The birds, one fancies, hold little or no 
stock in their last year's nests ; and old deeds 
can never take the place of new in this career 
of immortals. " He may laugh that wins," says 
the old proverb ; but not he that has got done 
winning, and folded his powers in unworthy 
torpor. He who has outgrown himself, and has 
a sense of it, is so far sobered and mortified ; 
and he who is not merely resting, but rusting 
after toil, is put to shame as a cumberer of the 
ground. 



98 AT OUR BEST. 

The truly gladdening monument, wherewith 
to have our years and lives crowned, is an advanc- 
ing one, that admits of no capstone or comple- 
tion. If our house, which we have built for 
ourselves, is of so good material and so well 
built that we may see it stretching its pro- 
tecting roof over coming generations, a home 
still, it will be more of a house and reflect on us 
a higher joy. T© have established a business 
that shall remain a necessity and honor to com- 
merce, like many English and some American 
enterprises, and in which, as it were, the life of 
its founder enters into endless service and fur- 
therance of civilization, is the highest and hap- 
piest business success. To project a charity into 
the ages, giving our arms and alms an endless 
extension ; to send forth a good family of chil- 
dren into the world, who in their turn shall 
send forth others, and so perpetuate our bene- 
diction; to plant a few shade-trees for the new- 
comers ; to sing a song so true to the ages that 
one may catch, as did Wordsworth, the return- 
ing echoes ; to leave wise and good influences 
behind us ; to die and not die, but just then 
begin to live and serve in the earth, — this it is 
which gives the most cheering look and richest ♦ 
flavor to our days and nights, and shall make 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 99 

death easy. The least advance in whatever 
worthy way is a pride and a delight. A new 
fact and another principle are so much more of 
heaven. The sense of having got the victory 
over time and decay, of riding for ever on a flow- 
ing wave, of having made a beginning which 
shall know no ending, and at the same time of 
self-progress, — such is and must be ever an 
unsparable gladness. 

Made as we are, we shall always be in debt to 
the beauty and neatness of our surroundings, as 
a means of cheer ; for beauty itself is cheerful, 
sharing a play of finer lights, and the musical 
soul of Apollo ; and sets us, by sure communi- 
cations, into its own state. All nature is pic- 
torial, and made to beguile us. There is no 
sparing of paint on our House, save of the colors 
that are leaden and uninteresting. The enchant- 
ments are laid on so thick that none can tell 
where they are not. What an endless attention 
to canopies, curves, horizons, waves, bending of 
grasses, swaying of trees, roning of landscapes, 
and rounding of forms ! What an effort to hide 
the rags from our eyes ! for if Nature has a rent 
in her fair garment, she sets her wits at work 
instantly to cover the ugliness, and have all 
pleasing again. She would be presentable and 



100 AT OUR BEST. 

charming to us, as maidens to their lovers. She 
would have grass in our streets if she could ; 
and adorns the rough rocks with lichens, and old 
ruins and palings with mosses and vines. In my 
boyhood there came a land-slide on my father's 
farm : to-day I am struck with wonder to find 
a park of young trees on this spot, and have no 
doubt the beauty-fostering spirit has sent a bevy 
of speckled partridges and graceful squirrels 
to crown the scene. And all this means for 
us more of cheer; for who can enter into this 
genial presence, which hovers and gleams every- 
where, and not feel some sympathetic and joy- 
ous dancing of the blood and relaxing of the 
rigid muscles of the face? One maybe glad 
to the " brink of fear," as he bathes in this flow- 
ing sea of beauty. 

And do we not owe a duty to ourselves and 
our friends, that we so adorn our own little 
corners, the mimic worlds of our creation and 
care, with the grace that charms and makes 
cheerful ? Should not we also enter into this 
high aim, and help charge this fine battery, 
whereof the heart is a willing subject ? Never 
let us suffer blank walls, however white, so long 
as pictorial paper can be had so cheap. Let us 
gladden the eye, if we are able, with meritori- 



DAILY SITKSHINE. 101 

ous fresco, but at all events with pictures, which 
even the poorest can command. Let us refuse 
to be shut into a cheerless seven-by-nine room. 
My little study is five paces one way and four 
the other, and sufficiently low to suggest humil- 
ity to a tall man. But this is a low and base 
measurement, that may be easily set aside. In 
effect my study has an area of miles, and most 
delightful ones ; and many a Boston and New 
York parlor, with naked walls, is a dreary coop 
in comparison. With a few pictures I have con- 
trived to set this little box out of doors, and 
under the sky, and in the sunshine, and can at 
will overcome all sense of narrowness, and range 
with a happy freedom. Here, on the north, is 
a herd of cattle, a wooded glen, and a bold- 
towering Swiss mountain beyond, having its 
crown bathed with the golden glow of the 
setting sun ; on the south is a broad, quiet 
valley, with its winding river and fields of ripe 
grain ; on the east a farm-yard ; and on the 
west an arm of a lake stretching away through 
forests toward the main body of w^ater, which is 
hidden, and a mountain beyond, which is visible 
and bathed with a soothing air of repose. And 
every room may have such genial expansions, 
and cheering invasions from wide distances. It 



102 AT OUK BEST. 

requires no large outlay to work this pleasing 
miracle ; for the imagination is such a befriending 
talent, such a gift of magic and illusions, so ready- 
to carry forward and complete any ideal that is 
once hinted, that very ordinary prints — even 
not a few from our pictorial papers, " Harper's " 
and the " Graphic," which a few pennies will 
command and four pins will frame — are quite 
equal to the desired end. I recall a poor wo- 
man's room thus adorned, and have sat in it to 
observe her cheer and feel my own. The moral 
credit of the show may have added to its effect, 
— it was such an honor to do her best thus; 
and yet no one can doubt the happy influence, 
in many of the humblest homes, of inexpensive 
beauty. 

May it not be that the real secret lies in hav- 
ing the sense of the beautiful alive and active ; 
and it shall not matter so much about the extent 
and rank of the objects that serve? The mo- 
ment the taste for beauty is awakened, all becomes 
instantly transfigured, and life is new, — a some- 
what that is sweet and musical. The whole 
house has another look and atmosphere, that 
has a patch of flowers in front, or a single fine 
treasure within, as if a delicious drop were an 
adequate flux to dissolve the world into a flow 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 103 

of joy. " The heaviest weights," said the an- 
cients, " are often suspended on the finest wires ; " 
and it would seem that the least conscious co- 
operation with the finer aims of Providence 
brings a new universe of good cheer to our 
possession, — draws the man out of his brute 
relations, allies him to the stars and angels, and 
sets him against omnipresent influences of glad- 
ness. The smallest flower, or any mere glint of 
beauty, is great with happy influence for the sen- 
sitive ; whilst a meadow or mountain is nothing 
to the dormant. 

And neatness ! Who is poet enough to chant 
the full praise of a clean face on all things, as a 
friend of pleasure and contentment? Whilst 
its effect is highly moral, like a chapter of An- 
toninus, and sesthetical as a view of the sky, it 
also cheers every sense of the body and sets it 
more fully at peace. The untidy can never be 
eminently virtuous or happy, as having a defect 
that vitiates universally. We shall never look 
into stys for saints and angels ; nor into filthy 
homes, greasy and dirt-besmeared, for any but 
a peevish and low-spirited family, whose finer 
life and love seem to have withdrawn and shriv- 
elled in sheer self-protection. 

The suggestion that our imagination is given 



104 AT OTJH BEST. 

us in the interest of good cheer is one to be 
taken to heart and applied. We may enchant 
the unenchanted with this benignant and fertile 
power. It surpasses Thor ; for it can not only 
drink the ocean dry, as he could not, but can 
plant gardens and cities on its steepest plateaux. 
It can have as many rainbows as it likes, and 
set them where it lists, for picturesque effect. It 
can overlay all things with the prismatic colors, 
having them mixed to its taste, or changeful as 
on the clove's neck or the best silks from Canton. 
In childhood^ its free magic waives realities with 
a sovereign unconcern, since it can at pleasure 
turn a crutch into a fine steed ; two chairs into 
a chariot ; pebbles or pine-cones into a herd of 
cattle and sheep ; a boy and girl into a school of 
a hundred, with a full corps of teachers and 
board of examiners ; and a device of cloth into 
the finest baby to be found, which goes to sleep 
and wakes to order, talks and visits like a Mad- 
ame de Stael, and attends to etiquette with all 
the precision of a Chesterfield. And, later, what 
angels without wings it makes of lovers ! Jake 
and Hepsy, for the time, are skyborn, and belong 
to some better planet : when were such an Adonis 
and Venus ever seen before ! Who of us has not 
wrought the clouds to solid bastions, or a sub- 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 105 

lime mountain-] and ? Who does not people the 
solitude and the sunset with beautiful spirits, 
— as Swedenborg always went well attended, 
and the unpoetic Jews conceived pretty poetic 
guardians watching over their steps ? 

Imagination yields ready romance. It is master 
of the game of illusions, and can defy ill fortune. 
It superadds to all things as it lists, gives wings 
to the wingless, and life to the dead, — as an artist 
I once went with on a sketching excursion was 
for mending or recasting into better forms every 
scene he took ; setting here a clump of trees, 
where there was none ; there a pleasing ruin, 
which might have been, but was not ; yonder, 
on the lawn, an artistic group of cows and hens 
and pigs, that only forgot to come there just 
then ; and adding, for happy variety, a little 
lake, a boat, an old stub, and a fish-hawk, — all 
in all, playing his heedless pranks in the face of 
Nature with the zest of a reveller. But I came 
back wiser for the trip, since I learned once 
more what a friend I have in my imagination ; 
and that, henceforth, I may have stars in the 
blackest sky, company when I will, and of 
the best kind, and good cheer for the asking. 
For this enchanter is given to all, and there is 
no defeat but it may turn into victory; To the 



106 AT OUR BEST. 

right imagination, Nature is thus only hints and 
outlines ; actual beauty, a stray beam from the 
ideal ; common men and women, but rude types 
of the heroes we may foresee and foreknow ; 
and civilization, as it is, an insipid foretaste of 
the feast of life, to which, as oft as w T e please, 
we may invite ourselves. We may take wings 
when we like, and come into Paradise. We 
hold passports to Eden and the stars. Who can 
drag us into a dreary marsh or desert, when we 
may set ourselves at will into Arcadia or the 
Elysian Fields ? 

Of the many superficial and incidental occa- 
sions of cheer, too much trusted in by the care- 
less, there need be uttered only a hint. The 
rich fountain lies deeper in our nature, as the 
best springs flow from the heart of the hills. 
We must have our light from the sun, and not 
from farthing candles. The king's jester, with 
his idle dawdling and smirks, was a poor substi- 
tute for royal nobilities and manly purpose. He 
drew but cheap and fleeting smiles over the 
darkened depths. They who look to minstrels 
and buffoons for their staple delights shall not 
know of the better gladness of life. Theatres 
and circuses are not to be taken too freely. Too 
many games shame us at length, as somewhat 



DAILY SUNSHINE. 107 

low and unworthy, and we rise from them less 
cheerful than we sat down, as the victims of an 
evident robbery. Jokes and puns- must be no 
more than the spice of the feast. I find my 
jovial friend wisely brings himself and others 
past his sparkle and rattle to the better mean- 
ings, and counts on sense and sobriety in the 
long run. A library of wits would sober and 
depress any sensible reader. Nor should we 
quote and adopt too much Milton's famous invo- 
cation : — 

" Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 
Jest, and youthful Jollity, 
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, 
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles ; " 

for, although butterflies belong in the scenery, 
they do not make the real power and pleasure 
of the landscape. Our being seems to be wisely 
strung for a higher and nobler music ; and 
harlequin will be found to have the lowest pulse 
in the company. 

Above all, let us not look for happiness in 
any trick or drug. This angel is not found in 
hashish or Burgundy. It is not purchased by 
any low bargain. When the bacchanalian thinks 
he has got it, he has got something the most 
unlike it. The gods sell cheerfulness only at a 



108 AT OUR BEST. 

fair price. I went to see an old lady one day, 
who surprised me by saying, " I have all the 
joys I deserve, and I want no more." 

The main secret of cheerfulness lies in char- 
acter. Innocence is bathed in happy lights, 
and holiness is itself heaven. The perfect are 
the perfectly glad. Socrates said, "Virtue is 
the mother of pleasure ; " and Wordsworth, 
" There is no happiness in this life without 
intellect and virtue ; " and Sir Thomas Browne, 
" They are the happy in whom God is happy ; " 
and One greater than these, " Happy are the 
pure in heart." 

The conscience is a faithful officer of awards ; 
and all the boastings of bullies and blacklegs 
belie themselves by a central tone of reproach 
and sadness. Sin yields bad dreams by night 
and bad memories by day, and there is no escape 
by flight, or opiate, or bribery. Sin involves 
broken relations with the universe, and self- 
banishment and discredit. The sinner has lost 
his protections. He dreads to turn the next 
corner, for he expects to meet an avenger. But 
holiness, on the other hand, fills our atmosphere 
with a sunshine and warmth as of the sweetest 
clay in June. There is I know not what chem- 
ical charm in virtue, which touches the blood 



DAILY SUKSHINE. 109 

and the soul and the entire world ; and lo ! they 
are new and joyful ! 

Our subject brings to notice one paradox, — 
the happy unhappy man or woman. I do not 
refer to that cold and sparkling light of sardonic 
wit, that Goethe has idealized with such success 
in his Mephistopheles, — the leer and laugh of a 
refined and cruel depravity, which is not musical 
nor joyous. There, may be a grim delight in 
dissonance, a witty association of the laws and 
conditions of sin and disaster. The old prov- 
erb wrongly asserts, " It is time to laugh when 
matters can get no worse ; " for it is then time 
to cry and repent. But we have the testimony 
of the great French chief of police, Fouche, that 
" the worst rogues generally jest and guffaw 
when they are at length caught." Even despair 
may find a ludicrous view of itself for an instant, 
as when a noted criminal on his way to the 
gallows advised his conductor to avoid a given 
street, as there was a man there who would have 
him arrested for a bad debt ; and another, with 
the halter round his neck, blew the froth from 
a mug of beer, saying, " It is bad for health." 

But the happy unhappy man is of another 
tyipe. He is the chronic grumbler, to whom, we 
must believe bitter has become sweet. Gold- 



110 AT OUR BEST. 

smith's play of the " Good-Natured Man " very 
nearly miscarries and spoils the author's aim ; 
for, in introducing Croaker, who makes such a 
luxury of misery, he well-nigh changes the moral 
of the piece. It is a question whether the se- 
renity of the one, or the perversity of the other, 
is the more enjoyed. It is clearly a divided 
relish, when Honeywood says, " A fine day this, 
Mr. Croaker ! " and Croaker replies, " What 
signifies what fine weather we may have in a 
country going to ruin like ours ? Taxes rising 
and trade falling, money flying out of the king- 
dom and Jesuits swarming into it. I know at 
this time no less than a hundred and twenty 
Jesuits between Charing Cross and Temple 
Bar." The delight here is exquisite. But per- 
haps Charles Lamb introduces us to the best 
specimen of the Bittersweet family. He knew 
a card-player who was always growling out that 
he had no trumps. On one occasion they very 
adroitly contrived to give him all trumps ; but 
this was only some more meat for his moody- 
pie. " A fool could play this hand," was his 
croaky comfort. There is nothing an English- 
man so much enjoys, according to Sydney Smith, 
"as the pleasure of sulkiness." We all like to 
suck at these teats, now and then, which run 



DAILY SUNSHINE. Ill 

their cold gruel. " 'Tis a fine thing," we grant 
you, "to be cheerful; but we beg your pardon, 
we have the dumps on hand just now, and take 
to their company." 

There is, after all, a vein of the irresistibly 
comic about grumbling, that is possibly the se- 
cret of our affection for it, since, like comedy, 
it involves a ludicrous absurdity, — as of a sober 
man playing drunk; or an epicure, stuffed to 
bursting, declaring he has had not a crust to 
eat ; or a millionnaire engaging quarters at the 
poor-house. It is a game of contraries, a pas- 
time of perversities ; and not a case for pity, and 
running for the doctor or minister. I do not 
agree with Sterne, who said, " I pity the man 
that can travel from Dan to Beersheba and 
exclaim, 6 All is barren ! ' For that is his high- 
est privilege, the supreme success of the jour- 
ney. You may look to see that man going that 
way again, after the same enchantment. Grum- 
bling is his beatitude, without which life were 
cruel. And is it not possible that the Divine 
Goodness will set off some corner of heaven, or 
surrender a star, where this class may find ever- 
lasting delectation at croaking ! 



112 AT OUR BEST. 



IV. 

A LOW TONE. 

" It is the witness still of excellence, 
To put a strange face on its own perfection." 

Shakspeabe. 

" Lowliness is the base of every virtue ; 
And he who goes the lowest builds the safest. 
My God keeps all his pity for the proud." 

Bailey's Festus. 

IT VERY man has his native or acquired grav- 
ity, and the point predetermined, with the 
precision of fate, where he shall easily balance 
and may honestly and happily occupy. Every star 
has its true orbit ; and every man, be he Caesar or 
John Smith or Peter Simple, his rightful place ; 
and to sink below this, or to mount above it, is 
to encounter sharp frictions and miseries. The 
height of good fortune is to find and keep our 
true poise and sphere ; and humility, which we 
take to be spontaneity, a fine sense of reality, 
a good understanding and honest deal with nat- 
ure, seems to be the best guide and guaranty 
to the end desired. For it does not set itself 



A LOW TONE. 113 

down, and does not set itself up, but stands 
plainly, like every high and heroic trait, for 
what it is. A true lowliness is not so much in 
thought as in the absence of thought, or the 
better self wins its finest victories in our moods 
of oblivion. The man absorbed in his true task, 
intent only on serving, be he a hodman or a 
king, is always modest, and yet at his best. 

" There are who despise pride with a greater 
pride," if we may believe Thomas Fuller, and 
credit our own eyes, which often* observe the 
cant and posture of a vain lowliness. There is 
often a pert saintship lurking within a modest 
seeming, which will have all the world hear how 
finely it decries itself. It takes a low seat with 
one eye cocked to note who observes and ad- 
mires ; its humility wears a cockade, and watches 
how the hats come off to do it honor. " See 
me in the dust, do you not ? " is its imploring 
bequest ; and it would not mind a few laurels, 
and newspaper paragraphs, and private puffs, 
as a compensation of its rare meekness. 

When Antisthenes saw Socrates going about 
in a torn coat, he showed a hole thereof to the 
people, saying, " Lo ! through this hole I see 
the pride of Socrates." So English lords affect 
coarse cloth and bad hats, to pique and pamper 

8 



114 AT OUR BEST. 

themselves with a sense of contrast ; and genius 
— itself being judge — dons a frowzy guise and 
boorish airs, and would publish its wits by setting 
them in front of a witless background. An emi- 
nent man was accustomed to refer to his honor- 
able pedigree, and then to add, " The fine blood 
has become water in my generation : " by which 
he meant his own praise, in a very roundabout 
way. Thoreau had a conceit of cheapness, and 
would dine off a cent : " I make my pride in 
making my tlinner cost little," said the vain her- 
mit, — vain as Astor and Stewart in making theirs 
cost much. But Diogenes was worse still ; for 
he was not only vain of eating pounded peas 
and drinking out of his hand, but of his greasy 
coat and uncombed hair, and his old tub for a 
house. This is a vanity of rags, and is no more 
creditable than any other, as shrivelling may be 
as fatal a disease as swelling. It is a false by- 
play, the better to set off other qualities. The 
sediment of conceit is in all these cups, and many 
more like them, and obvious to any e3~e that looks. 
This is not self-forge tfulness and simplicity .and 
finding one's true level, as the honest stars find 
their places, or the mist rises to its line of equi- 
poise in the air, by giving Nature sway ; but 
it is a shrewd way of denuding one's self 



A LOW TONE. 115 

that others may cover him with garments of 
praise. 

There is an Oriental story that shows the 
native sense of the Pagans against this pious 
trick. By their own claim and by popular 
credit, the Sufis were saints of the first rank ; 
and one of them, as we are told, found his way 
to the gate of the Mahometan Paradise, and 
knocked that he might be let in to take his 
seat with the favored. " Who comes to the 
shining portal ? " asked Allah. The Sufi re- 
plied, " One who is less than nobody." Allah 
took offence at this cant and misnaming of things, 
and responded with somewhat of severity in his 
tone, " Then thou art too little for heaven: 
seek thou some lower sphere." The saint 
turned away in deep thought, and speedily 
discovered that he had undershot the real 
mark, and rendered himself justly obnoxious 
to the reproach of Him who loves truth before 
all else. He saw there must also be conscience 
and soundness in humility, and that if he were 
a Sufi saint then he was one with Deity. And 
now, putting off a false modesty, and taking on 
a simple and real, he came again to the celestial 
gate, and gave a frank and hearty knock that 
told for itself. And from within the voice of 



116 AT OUH BEST. 

Allah was once more heard : " Who seeks to 
enter bliss?" The Sufi boldly replied, " Tis 
thyself, Blessed Lord ! " This time the shining 
door swung on willing hinges, for here was 
orie who had learned that truth is the only 
modesty. 

" If one be Caesar," said Montaigne, " let him 
boldly think himself the greatest captain in the 
world." And we find Goethe doing the like, in 
his conversation with Eckermann ; for he declared 
in plain terms wherein he had outdone Tieck, a 
fellow-poet of Germany, and then added, " I do 
not hesitate to speak of myself as I am : I did 
not make myself what I am." When occasion 
calls, it is modesty to affirm one's self in this 
frank way, and especially when all possible 
edge of conceit is turned or taken off by giving 
due credit to nature and circumstances. The 
truth may be thus told with an air that is clear 
of all taint of conceit. Let every one be as 
honest with his own talent as with any of the 
facts of the universe, for the perfect job is always 
in hewing to the line. 

But if humility forbids the vanity of false 
abatements, so it does of false inflations, whereto 
we are ever the more inclined. For we are set 
by a natural impetus toward those things which 



A LOW TONE. 117 

we are not but would be. Besides we find 
the times are more friendly to false airs and 
claims, and seem just on the eve of offering 
a premium on the very worst bloat of egotism 
and display. Put on airs, and you will be widely 
indorsed by the light weights, and taken to the 
bosom of showy society as its darling and de- 
light. There is an itch for fine surfaces, and 
a reserve of further scrutiny. Make an appear- 
ance, keep costly turn-outs, have marble fronts, 
display gold and silver dishes, and support a 
box at the opera, — and who cares to look fur- 
ther ? The devil is invited now-a-days, if he 
dress well and have his handkerchief scented. 
We dare not take our social pets in pieces, who 
come so finely robed and perfumed, and know 
how it is at their centres, — as the honest Eng- 
lishman sawed into the head of the winking 
Madonna to know whether it was miracle or 
machinery. Our fashionable society is mainly 
a masquerade and matter of rich costumes, with 
no moral anxieties about what characters are 
concealed. It has slight basis, or none at all, in 
purity and honor, but only one in bank accounts 
and heavy expenses. It would be a sad bur- 
lesque on our nineteenth century to know the 
names and histories of all our parlor saints, and 



118 AT OUR BEST. 

whose arms are around our young ladies in the 
waltz, and by whom our ices and champagnes 
are despatched. Fashion is not fastidious, in 
any high sense ; but has her cards given out on 
the most superficial grounds. We seem to have 
lost all power of vision but that of the outer and 
inferior eye, or have sold out our souls to our 
senses ; and all that glitters we count for gold. 
A feather weighs down wisdom and character 
in our Pagan estimate ; and how to make a 
show, which is the key to the honors of the time, 
is the prime question. What wonder then that 
life is rendered tumid and pretentious ? 

Whatever we may think of the root of osten- 
tation buried in a high and aspiring nature, we 
can never love nor respect its bloom. It must 
be an arrested growth. All aristocracy is shoddy, 
and a little ridiculous and laughable, consider- 
ing how plain and simple a true greatness always 
is, and how democratic and accessible. The 
great are never out of our reach, but obey a per- 
fect law of condescension. Vanity is the attri- 
bute of a corporal and not of a general, who 
delights to have his uniform off. It is a juvenile 
trait, and falls off in time, where there is due 
progress, like the first set of teeth. It has some 
relation to a barbaric age, when the eye is smit- 






A LOW TONE. 119 

ten with scarlet and deems tattooing a matter of 
first rank. It is always ignorance and never 
wisdom that swells and pretends. Plutarch 
wrote of scholars two thousand years ago what 
seems like an announcement of yesterday : 
" Those that went to the school of Athens were 
first of all wise ; next lovers of wisdom ; and 
at last, in course of time, plain common men ; 
for the longer they applied themselves to study 
and philosophy, so much the more all vanity, 
pride, and pedantry abated in them, and the 
nearer they came to plain, dow T nright, honest 
men." 

We suspect at once the character that is too 
highly costumed, on the score that there is some 
need of thus drawing the attention from the 
centre to the surface, as Brag knows why he 
talks so loud. It is the quacks who advertise. 
A true friendship never protests and speaks 
out loud, but will act generously all day and 
every day, and be silent ; and when any virtue 
plumes itself and shows off, there is defect some- 
where. All egotism is slightly insane; indicates 
a little water on the brain, which more years and 
wisdom, save with the hopeless, will serve to 
trepan and let off. At fifty all but the worst 
cases are cured, and we have sound men and 



120 AT OUR BEST. 

women, whose words are low-toned ; who criti- 
cise themselves ; who hate sensations and shams ; 
and who lose relation to the superficial aspects 
of the age, but to find relations to the universe. 
The man who has found life at length, — that 
precious elixir to be enjoyed without let or hin- 
drance when found, — takes a story from his 
house, which twenty years ago he thought not 
large and grand enough ; or sells out, and will 
have a modest retreat, sacred to the Muses and 
Penates and all his serious and weighty friends. 
There is a down that is up. The goal of all 
progress is realism and merit. A scientist told 
me that at first he used his magnifying-glass 
on everything, but that now he should prefer to 
use it on nothing, as he liked the perfect integ- 
rity of vision, seeing each thing, however minute, 
as it is. Varnish stands at some discount with 
the wise, who take more to a " dead finish," or 
the polish that the wood itself admits under 
plane and sand-paper, on which the eye reposes 
as on a real beauty. Tinsel is tawdry to those 
who have at length opened their best eye, and 
discovered the deeper realities. 

The charm of humility is its morality. Its 
dozens always count twelve, and thirteen 
where there is liability of coming short. It 



A LOW TONE. 121 

is a true and just metre. It is good all the 
way through like a Quaker box of strawberries. 
Humility is an Englishman of the better days 
of the island, — before the Britishers lost the 
rough, honest genius of their land and consented 
to masks, and in Sheffield sold polished iron for 
steel, and sizing for silk at Birmingham. Frois- 
sart relates of the "English king, after the suc- 
cessful battle of Cressy : " The kynge wolde that 
no man shulde be proude or make boast, but 
every man humbly to thanke God." 

Our word or deed is sublime when it hugs 
reality and speaks for itself. A report from the 
soul is another passage for the world's bible, 
and will be hailed as what all men have felt 
within themselves, but had not power to utter. 
Conscience is a royal trait. Paint and varnish 
betray the cheapness of our wood and the bad- 
ness of our work ; but what can equal the native 
grain and hue of mahogany, cherry, maple, or 
black walnut, which unadorned is adorned the 
most ! There is no artificial ray like the sun- 
beam, which seems a part of the universe and 
self-sustained. Our affectations are cheap and 
quite outside of our better selves, like our gar- 
ments which we lay off every night. It is life 
that is worth the while, how we are to our- 



122 AT OUR BEST. 

selves, whether full or void at the centre, and 
not what we are taken to be : Jesus outweighed 
all the Pharisees in Judea, and put wordy rabbis 
to silence with the simple words from his own 
fulness ; and every one's joy and power are in 
the wit and worth of the private heart, which, in 
the end, we learn to cultivate and rely on. 

We are great only when off guard. The min- 
ister's prayer is then prayer, and draws earth and 
heaven together : every heart knows the instant 
when he becomes impersonal, and passes into 
subordination to the Spirit, and is only a mouth- 
piece. We are speedily swept into the current 
and borne to the Infinite by the attractions of 
the self - forgetting saint. The orator never 
deals plainly and powerfully with his subject, 
till with his heat he has melted and dissolved 
himself. What so stupid as the first half- 
hour of a social circle, whilst self-consciousness 
and vanity hold their sway, and each one is 
there in his own name and personality ; but 
reduce the memory and rub down the pride by 
a little plain-dealing in thought and act, and 
give the real life a chance, and what fine feats 
of ease and grace and joy will follow ; and 
what victory over the hours like that which now 
transpires ! No manners are ever the best man- 



A LOW TONE. 123 

ners, since by the play of the spirit they are 
disengaged and free, and set infinitely above 
mannerism and book etiquette. They bend and 
sway with nature and are allied to poetry. They 
put Chesterfield and Beau Brummel to shame. 
The great actor does not thoughtfully and pom- 
pously play his part, but puts himself aside, 
and without thought or pride as if he were not 
himself but another, he lives it. It is humility 
which holds the highest secrets, and sets us at 
our best in every sphere. 

There is always some avenging Nemesis sent 
in pursuit of a vain pride. The universe is piti- 
less in its treatment of this tumor. Who does 
not know the old smart under some caustic or 
other ? The fates rally to humble the least show 
of conceit. Some invisible hand knocks off 
our ambitious top-knot just when we could least 
spare it. Indeed, here is our soaring Icarus 
with his wings melted off by the sun and ridicu- 
lously sunk in the mud ; and what will we do 
but stand and laugh at him ? But yesterday I 
heard a mother lamenting that she failed and 
suffered mortification every time she tried to 
set off the baby to specially fine effect, as if the 
little one had entered into some mischievous 
conspiracy with an evil genius to cover her with 



124 AT OUR BEST. 

shame. The boys and girls in our schools, I 
notice, who spell with some pomp, and as to the 
committee and visitors, are the first to blunder, 
because they have their eye off the right point ; 
they lose sight of the act in watching for its 
effect, and blindly run into some ditch ; or their 
loud and showy manner is seen to be mere par- 
roting and trick, and passes for nothing with the 
sensible people, who are waiting to hear the mod- 
est boy or girl whose act will be simple and steeped 
with merit. The vanity of Don Quixote covered 
him with disgrace, and every new blunder was 
worse than the last: it was a cruel succession 
of mortifications, for which nobody pitied him, 
' but all said, " Served him right ! he should have 
taken the advice of his humble squire." Sopho- 
moric gas will not burn on those occasions where 
light is most needed ; and the less said among 
the really wise about Greek roots and the prob- 
lems in Euclid, the better. Whether man or 
maid, the swell should see instantly, on the faces 
of the company, that there is no favor with the 
high-minded and worthy, but disgust at the 
sight of this air and assumption. There is no 
kind of ballooning that is so safe and respect- 
able as travel on the solid earth : the going up 
may be gay, but who will venture insurance on 



A LOW TONE. 125 

the coming down ? The happy circumstance 
with the lowly is that they stick close to reality 
and stand always on the firmest hardpan, and 
clear the humiliating punishments, — all the 
more humiliating that they provoke our smiles 
instead of our pity. There is no disaster so 
much to be dreaded as collapse after display, since 
it reveals both poverty of talent and character. 

" The man, in troth, with much ado 
Has proved that one and one make two," 

and is thenceforth rated as one among the many 
bubbles. Conceit is always a fine mark for mis- 
chievous archers, there being we know not what 
charm in witnessing the flutter and tumble of 
this plumed bird. What invites a knife like a 
bladder or bloated nothing? The whole uni- 
verse will tug at a stumbling-block to have it 
set in the way of vanity, and will hide away 
and chuckle to see the fall and the chagrin ! 

When Thor, with Thialfi and Loki, went 
forth, with an air of great self-consequence, to 
visit and stun with astonishment the Jotuns or 
Giants, they were of course outwitted and 
beaten at the games of their own proposing, 
and returned disgraced from their attempted 
display. Who could eat but Loki ? and straight- 
way he challenged to an eating-match, which 



126 AT OUR BEST. 

Logi very modestly accepted. Beginning at the 
two ends of a long large trough, they met half 
way. But it was found that the boasting Loki 
had eaten only the flesh, whilst Logi had eaten 
flesh, bones, and trough itself. Who could run 
but Thialfi, the fleet, claiming to be swifter 
than the reindeer or the wild gazelle ? He chal- 
lenged to a race ; but Hugi, the giant, made 
the whole distance before his opponent had 
started. Who could drink but the great Thor, 
whose thirst was like the desert, and whose 
stomach like a cloud ? But a cup which he 
could not empty at three draughts yielded a 
Jotun just a sip, and left him still athirst. But 
Thor was filled with proud wrath, and would 
wrestle with the best of them. And they pitted 
against him Elli, a toothless and withered old 
crone, who flung him in an instant and taunted 
him for his pretentious pusillanimity. Alas for 
Loki, Thialfi, and Thor, the cream of the Norse 
heroes ! But if the immortals and gods are 
tripped by their conceit, or cut asunder from 
the sources of power and put to shame, what 
can j-ou and I expect of safety from airs and 
assumptions ! 

Vanity is the talent of failures. It is blinded 
and corrupted by self-admiration, and has an 



A LOW TONE. 127 

incapacity to know merit from demerit ; spins like 
a foolish top in its own little centre, and loses 
its relations to the sources of power ; goes to seed 
in the husk of its own conceit, and is a windfall; 
withdraws from out-of-doors and the univer- 
sal currents, which are ever setting in the right 
directions and will carry us far if we will but 
fling ourselves into them. The great step is out 
of self. He who can be nobody will be some- 
body. Leave your little coop and come under 
the sky, if you would be and do greatly and 
wisely. Sink the personal in the universal, 
and your word and act shall be a part of nature 
and a sure victory. A good divine once said to 
me that he never went to a hard duty in his own 
name and power, but slipped out of himself by 
an act of prayer into the keeping and control of 
the Spirit : the hard was easy then, for he had 
engaged the Infinite in his service. It is this 
higher bond with the divine that draws on 
the courage of the martyr. Every great artist 
subordinates his personality to beauty, and his 
picture takes rank with the sunset : it is really 
a piece of skill from the same hand working a 
little further off. The great poet throws him- 
self on the Muse, or the genius of the universe, 
and sings the songs that are brought him out of 



128 AT OUR BEST. 

the Arcana; and they are good for all time, 
because wrought from the music of the spheres 
or the notes that sound at the heart of the uni- 
verse and are not temporal. Can you work for 
a cause, and lose sight of yourself in doing it? 
Can you tie to a principle ? Can you worship 
an end and make an idol of an idea ? Can you 
waive your claim as Clement or Clementina, and 
moil and toil with a free and glad surrender of 
body and soul for any one of the divine aims 
of the world ? Then you shall have a better 
reason and power than your own playing into 
and through you ; by this shift of the personal 
for the impersonal, which is a feat of true humil- 
ity, you have touched the batteries that are always 
charged with the finest and best serving electric- 
ity of the universe ; it is an exchange of weak- 
ness for power ; or, as Emerson well says, " In- 
stead of the tanks and buckets of knowledge to 
which we are daily confined, we come down to 
the shore of the sea, and dip our hands in its 
miraculous waves." " I think the thoughts of 
God," was the profound remark of Kepler, 
who had risen out of himself and yielded to the 
courses and spirit of Nature, — 

" Searching, through all he felt and saw, 
The springs of life, the depths of awe, 
To find the law within the law." 



A LOW TONE. 129 

The modest eye has the perfect vision, and 
succeeds to a just reading of the divine order 
and meaning. It is self that is perverted and 
that perverts ; that is the victim of a whim ; 
that stands in its own light ; that has a deceiv- 
ing saffron in its eye ; that has a crotchet in its 
brain. We must waive our impertinent claims 
and surrender to the universe, if we would be 
wise and move on with success to any worthy 
result. Vanity plays a low and poor game to 
its own eye, or to the eye of the public, and 
is drawn from the secret drill and drudgery in 
shirt-sleeves and free perspiration, which alone 
can make anything of anybody. It is under 
some innate necessity of slighting the first steps 
to success, which lie in private and secret ways, 
like the roots of all great trees. It is spoiled by 
its morbid and impatient craving of publicity ; 
whilst humility will begin at the bottom, and be 
true to all the needful stages and prosper ; as 
Michel Angelo quarried, ground and mixed his 
paints, and worked at every process, coarse and 
fine, and had his skill amply based. 

Greatness is a child of solitude. Genius grows 
up in the by-ways of the world and does not 
know itself, and is apt to be something less when 
at length it surprises its own secret. All that 

9 



130 AT OUR BEST. 

has been verified of Shakspeare can be written 
on the palm of your hand, and the historians 
and critics vainly attempt to add anything. 
Homer has no biography, as if he were born 
full grown and spirited away at last. " You 
shall make yourself dust to do anything well," 
said Saadi. The secret seems to be to do our 
work for its own sake, forgetting self and the 
public ; to fall in love with some shining ideal 
and have perfection our aim ; to have the vic- 
tory in making a finished job, whatever may 
become of it after it is done ; to yield all the 
forces of our life in rapt consent to this end. 
But only the lowly in spirit can do this. The 
vain can never lay by their trumpets and forego 
applause to that extent that they may set them- 
selves in the best relations to their work and the 
times they live in. They must be superficial and 
sensational by the law of their nature, and so 
shall fail in all but cheap and fleeting results. 
They will for ever bring painted mist and ban- 
ners, and not solid deeds. 

The great and real make a jest of this showj^ 
sunflower of conceit that lifts its head so pom- 
pously above the rest of the garden. The ancients 
likened the futile hue and cry and boasting of 
vanity to the travail of a mountain that brings 



A LOW TONE. 131 

forth a mouse. Agesilaus said of a conceited ora- 
tor who plead a petty cause with great ado, " I 
don't think much of that shoemaker that makes 
a great shoe for a little foot." But Montaigne's 
satire is still better : " When I hear our archi- 
tects thunder out their bombast words of pilas- 
ters, architraves, and cornices, of the Corinthian 
and Doric orders, and such like stuff, my imagi- 
nation is presently possessed with the palace of 
Appollidonius in Amadis de Gaul ; when, after all, 
I find them but the paltry pieces of my kitchen- 
door." We join these old verdicts so far as we 
have the weight and sincerity of the ancients. 
Modesty carries the sympathy of the wise and 
good. Nature always commands the best votes. 
" I think breakfasts so pleasant," wrote Sydney 
Smith to a friend, " because no one is conceited 
before one o'clock." The Scotch have a prov- 
erb that the greatest bummer is never the best 
bee, or spending on noise is nothing. It is a 
happy success, never lost on the elect, to furnish a 
maximum of results with a minimum of advertise- 
ment ; or they like the inspirations of the Sibyl, 
but not the contortions, since these are for the 
vulgar. The charm and credit of a low bearing 
and plain- dealing with all matters are taken 
note of by the fine vision, and wherever these 



132 AT OUR BEST. 

merits are found the worthy eye rests and gives 
greeting. 

The vain have often a core of soundness 
left, knowing what sugar is sweet or wisdom 
wise, and are themselves pleased with the mod- 
est realities. We fancy the attraction of the 
country to our fashionable city population, who 
seem secretly to despise their circles and habits, 
and more and more go to live by the ocean and 
among the hills, — shunning the bedizening sum- 
mer resorts, — lies in the plain, homespun guise 
of all their surroundings, — the quiet cottage, 
the relief from insane baggage, the low count of 
daily toilets, the easy attitude and sensible con- 
versation at table, the absence of flash and 
fustian, and escape from the painful sense of 
playing a high game for a low end. There is 
good reason to suspect, could we but set an ear 
at the keyhole of many- a Fifth Avenue palace in 
the high carnival season, we should hear terms 
of some disgust. Is it one reason why English- 
men and Americans shy and hide away, choose 
a seat by themselves in saloon and car, ride all 
day in a stage-coach and say never a word, 
order a private parlor at a hotel, dodge their 
friends on the street, have a headache or a pre- 
vious engagement made afterwards to keep them 



A LOW TONE. 133 

from the party, — that they dread their inevitable 
affectation and pride if they permit themselves 
in company? Do they feel that they should 
be guilty of a parade which would belie them 
and lessen their self-respect? Is vanity the 
ghost they fear will make its appearance on the 
least temptation ? Is it that they are more hum- 
ble and honest with themselves than with others ? 
I have long regarded the extreme of fashion as 
painful to itself; and notice that the snobs of 
both sexes wear on their faces an introverted 
sneer and a slight air of discontent, as if they 
knew the exact state of their case and thought 
little of themselves, whatever others might think 
of them. Vanity is still apologetic and creeps 
on its way. Every head that is carried above 
its rightful level has broken with the sense of a 
perfect veracity, and its lofty air is at the cost 
of an inward shame, and the better eye is down- 
cast and retiring like that of any rogue. 

There are three prescriptions for this swelling 
and weakness, which, after our hasty diagnosis, 
it will do to bring to the reader's notice. 

1. We must measure from ourselves up, and not 
often from ourselves down, as the habit is with the 
proud. If there are wiser and better men and 
women than we with a tithe of our aids and 



134 AT OXJE BEST. 

helps, as there are by the colony, it is at least 
a hint that modesty would fit our case. Would 
Epaminondas, Phocion, Pericles, Plato, more 
than two thousand years ago, have boasted of 
our degrees of attainment ? or would they not 
shame us if they were to stand by us to-day, like 
oaks beside saplings ? I am humble when I look 
up to the stars, — 

" For merit lives from man to man, 
And not, Lord ! from man to thee," — 

and lives from man to man, in its own esti- 
mate, only as there is the vain downward look 
from self to inferior ranks. " Some knowing 
the lowness of their parts," said Thomas Ful- 
ler, " love to live with dwarfs that they may 
seem proper men." Vanity chooses to be great 
among the small. Dr. Johnson kept inferior 
company for social background to his own fig- 
ure; and it is not uncommon, — this one and 
the other pluming themselves that they are not 
the worst people in the community, as if it were 
a merit and mark of greatness never to have 
got into the police court. The better relations 
are ignored, and conceit is fostered by noting 
those contrasts only which are in its own favor. 
But suppose the outlook to be from ourselves 



i 



A LOW TONE. 135 

upward, as it should, — whether for example and 
influence, or for a better test of our rank and 
standing. Where is pride now ? After read- 
ing of Socrates and that fatal dish of hemlock, 
which he so freely drank rather than compro- 
mise a purpose ; or of John Rogers and that 
wreath of cruel flames which did not daunt 
him; or Fox's "Book 'of Martyrs," with its 
stories, stranger than fiction, of love and life 
that looked not back on the death-march, but 
went straight on with firm tread, ■ — who may 
not feel humble in this matter of courage? 
Would we stick as they did, and so honor God 
and our own natures ? Would we burn sooner 
than turn ? I fear not one of us. I read of 
John Howard and Florence Nightingale, and 
my humanity lays a finger on her lip and hunts 
for a low seat. I see Galileo buffeted, Colum- 
bus baffled, Garibaldi checked and put off, 
Garrison mobbed and balked, but each still keep- 
ing firm to his aim ; and I seem only worthy to 
sit at their feet and do them reverence. Let us 
stand up beside the Hebrew peasant from Naza- 
reth, and the Jewish fishermen and tent-makers 
who rallied to his standard, and see how we look 
who have their example and eighteen centuries 
in our favor. Let us daily set our atom against 



186 AT OUR BEST. 

the Infinite, and know the measure of our 
dependence for all things, and cast forth vanity 
as the vice of fools and the profane. 

2. Another fine antidote to all sjonptoms of 
bloat is a broader and closer intimacy with Nat- 
ure, which breathes everywhere the spirit of 
simplicity and reality. The modesty of earth 
and sky is conspicuous, and healthful to the 
soul that lies open to it. What is better calcu- 
lated to look pride out of countenance, and draw 
on a beautiful and happy simplicity, than the 
land, the air, the forests, the waters, the stars, 
the unpretentious merit of the sun itself ? How 
humbly and loftily the world greets us, and 
draws us apart from all our priggish and surface 
ways, as mere chaff compared with a life that 
lies hidden within us. The spirit of the universe 
impresses us as something disengaged from itself 
and as noble and beautiful because overflowing ; 
and we happily yield to its modest sway. 

If there is in Nature's spirit and style, at any 
point, the least hint of display, she speedily 
checks and shames it, as much as to say to us, 
" Such things are cheap, and not to be counted 
on." How is the peacock's tail avenged by ugly 
feet and a bad voice ; and the best civilization 
has read this bird out of the list of the beautiful 



A LOW TONE. 137 

and creditable. The family of comets, the pea- 
cocks of the sky, are clearly not favorites, since 
they are admitted to the front but seldom, and 
are speedily sent to the rear. The flaming 
meteors that rush so gaudily into our sky are 
refused resource, as a wise parent denies a vain 
child — bent on expensive show — money to 
carry out an idle purpose. The rainbow is 
regarded as something too pert, and is straight- 
way dissolved. The gaudy sunset is swiftly 
dashed by soberer hues ; the ambitious colorist 
is instantly caught at his game, and his bedizen- 
ing crimson and purple are hidden by neutral 
tints. Even floral beauty is treated summarily, 
as if its influence were not altogether healthful : 
the orchards are not permitted long their holi- 
day costumes ; the clover-field is but briefly 
encouraged in its burst of glory ; and the gar- 
dener laments that his favorites, the callas and 
peonies, are so short-lived ; whilst we all know, 
who have watched with half an eye, how evan- 
escent is the perfect bloom of the human body, 
what a fading charm, — to-day it is and to-mor- 
row it is not, refusing to stay, however we coax 
it ! But a lower beauty fades that a higher may 
appear. These things are but secondary, and an 
offence if they stir pride and give it the upper 



138 AT OUR BEST. 

hands of modesty; and Dame Nature removes 
the temptation. She tolerates no foolish dis- 
play, but, showing us what she might do but will 
not, her average bearing is a wise and cheerful 
gravity. We must come to her with a plain and 
pure heart, and shall return from our commun- 
ions still more chastened and genuine. We get 
from her the high secret, reflected in all fine art 
as well, and in all great lives of men and women 
not less, that humility is the beginning of wis- 
dom and the key to content and progress. 

3. A humble bearing attends a substantial edu- 
cation. If we would have modesty take root in 
our schools and at our firesides, and pervade our 
youth, our culture must not begin with French 
and an ambitious parade of high-sounding stu- 
dies ; must not be, as we fear it too often is, a 
training for parlors and the ends of pride in 
general, — in other words, an insane depend- 
ence on varnish and gilding. Our mode of dis- 
cipline is too pretentious, and infects our youth 
with giddiness. Our children are blown up 
like bladders ; and often, after a protracted acad- 
emy course, set their minds against the wind 
and they would blow away. We can never 
have modesty but from a less superficial and 
vain education. Let us dispense with exhibi- 



A LOW TONE. 139 

tions and banners, premiums and prizes, which 
spoil alike teachers and scholars ; for such lures 
lead from the path instead of on it, or to the 
extent that you buy up ambition you cheapen 
character and lessen the worth of the work done 
as discipline. Better a little for itself than much 
for some lower end. Better a little modest and 
sound learning that gives weight and worth to 
life, that can speak in its own name, that can 
light its own path like the firefly, that renders 
one a stubborn fact in this fleeting world, than 
volumes of lore gathered to the surface, which 
is a vanity of culture and a learned ignorance. 
Let us make a sober and earnest work of getting 
wisdom, and attempt less to accomplish more ; 
and the effect on character will be as marked 
as on the intellect. 



140 AT OUK BEST. 



V. 

CONTENTMENT. 

11 Our content 
Is our best having." 

Sharspeare's Henry VUL 

" It is the mynd, that maketh good or ill, 
That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poorer 
For some, that hath abundance at his will, 
Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store; 
And other, that hath litle, askes no more, 
But in that litle is both rich and wise; 
For wisdome is most riches : fooles therefore 
They are, which fortunes doe by vowes devize ; 

Sith each unto himselfe his life may fortunize." 

Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

/ T~\HE faces one meets on the sidewalk, with 
the exception of two or three in a thou- 
sand, have a discontented and restless look, as 
if, for some reason, life were not carried by 
gravitation on oiled grooves, but by painful 
forcing. The effect of a stroll on Broadway 
or Beacon Street, as through Five Points and 
North Street, is depressing to a sensitive nat- 
ure, lowers the tone of the most cheerful spirit ; 



CONTENTMENT. 141 

and, on getting home, unless one finds a con- 
tented friend, a sunny volume, a cat, a dog, 
some flowers, or other piece of real and charm- 
ing life, the bad effect holds for an evening, 
and must be slept off like a pain in the head. 
At our operas and concerts, where gay costumes 
and the fine magic of music heighten the lights, 
the shadowy lines of our modern life are quite 
discernible : the smiles are often forced ; the 
applause is not hearty, nor in the same major 
key as the composer's notes. Here are men 
present in body, but absent in spirit, evidently 
drawn away from the gay scene into some ugly 
strife with mathematics and percentages ; and 
women, afflicted w T ith the weariness of much 
dressing ; and you shall not come away without 
need of some reactionary tonic to set you once 
more right with yourself and the world. 

The age is restless and expectant. The pres- 
ent hour is deemed empty and ill. To-day is 
not the day we want. In December we sigh for 
June ; in May, October is our month. And it 
is easy to see in the shifting kaleidoscope of 
society, the running to and fro, as if half the 
world were just arriving and the other half just 
departing, that the old maxims of discontent hold 
a despotic and wide sway over men and women. 



142 AT OUR BEST. 

Here are manufacturers who would be mer- 
chants, — no more creators, but peddlers ; 
mariners who think the sea is too wide and 
noisy, too open and public, and, in order to 
felicity, they must find inland cots secluded and 
quiet ; farmers who are holding a quarrel with 
privacy, and are looking to a settlement in town 
and sea- voyages next year and every year ; hon- 
est men sighing for politics, and ruined poli- 
ticians smarting at heart, and regretting they ever 
came out of an innocent sphere. Everywhere 
labor is not in demand, is not well paid, suffers 
from bad climate, can have no friends, no pro- 
motion, no holidays, and is about to strike its 
tent and emigrate. The country is too old in 
this place, too new in that ; in one quarter there 
is too much winter, and in another not enough, 
and the right degree of latitude seems to be left 
out. Housekeeping is exchanged for boarding, 
and boarding for housekeeping ; and more and 
more are falling into this pitiable game of shut- 
tle to a web of domestic routs and removals. 
Society is on the chase for a fresh batch of nov- 
elties, new turns in affairs, untried sensations, 
more wonders, and later and larger miracles, as 
if it had been unhinged and spoilt by too much 
display of an opening world, or as if the habit 



CONTENTMENT. 143 

of the century were against us and likely to 
breed in all a restless temperament. 

" Any time but now; ' : " anywhere but 
here ; " " any thing but this : " these are the 
terms of our daily wails, and betray our desire 
to escape from ourselves and our circumstances. 
But every sensible person must see that the 
granting of our prayers will not stay our com- 
plaint. Our remedy is not remedial. For who 
is Time that he can work any miracle for us 
to-morrow that he cannot to-day ? Is not any 
day every day ? Time is indifferent and wears 
a uniform face from year to year, or opens to 
us the same waiting void. And it is not other- 
wise with space. Restless people will travel 
from Dan to Beersheba and find it Dan all the 
way, and as far beyond as they may please to 
go, with their present cheap and superficial 
habits. Many Americans think contentment 
is in Europe, and Europeans in America ; but 
they learn on trial that these are both one coun- 
try, bounded by the same sky, swept by the 
same air, fertile with the same nettles. Here 
are Bostonians and New Yorkers packing their 
trunks to go abroad in search of some enchanted 
city, where all things favor and the fever of un- 
rest never comes. They think to find and dally 



144 AT OUR BEST. 

with the mild-eyed Dame who enchants with 
perfect repose, in Paris ; but they reach Paris 
to discover that she left the day before for 
Rome ; at Rome they are one train too late ; 
they hasten to Florence, to Venice, to Berlin, 
but with no better success, — always a little be- 
hind time, and only see the skirts of the retreat- 
ing goddess. They pursue a flying Beauty, 
who will suffer no lightning express to overtake 
her on the proposed line. What is so bad as 
a misplaced trust ? Space is indifferent, save 
in some slight ways that lie quite on the sur- 
face and can only affect curiosity. Anywhere 
is everywhere. The first horizon is like the 
last, here and there the same clear-.cut line 
against the sky. The sun rises and sets after 
one fashion in all lands, and holds his way 
through a firmament so uniform you would 
think, at the north or the south pole, you had 
never seen another. Staple habits of the peo- 
ple are quite similar in all quarters. Where 
do they not wear hats and shoes, tell stories, buy 
and sell for gain, court and marry and keep 
house, have a daily dinner, and take a little 
wine for the stomach's sake, and forget to pay 
their debts and do as they would be done by ? 
Geography is pretty much a delusion with its 



CONTENTMENT. 145 

idle talk about here and there ; and travel is 
still a staying at home in most particulars. ' . 

But if time and space are decoys and lure 
us to no end, or do not serve us with the grace 
we seek, but rather make a mock at our prayer, 
shall we fare better by being shifty in our pur- 
suits and leaving one trade or craft to settle 
ourselves in some other? Everybody thinks 
everybody but himself has a charmed calling. 
But who believes a universal rotation among 
our restless workers would set matters to rights ? 
All work is very much the same thing ; and 
the spirit that chafes in any sphere, and would 
shirk and run, would be likely to do the same 
thing in every sphere. A wrong spirit will 
never find the right labor ; whilst an earnest 
soul can hardly miss of a welcome task, since 
it will contrive to fit itself to what seems unfit 9 
and force some degree of poetry into the hard- 
est prose ; as Basle, according to the legend, 
changed the infernal pit, into which he had been 
cast, into a Paradise and drew the best angels 
to his presence, by his happy complacency and 
fine gift of making good of the bad. 

The world in one view of it is bankrupt and 
has little to give but that which we carry to it. 
The contented people have all brought content- 

10 



146 AT OUR BEST. 

ment with them. "We shall find at last that the 
man is every thing ; the time, place, and office, 
next to nothing. The universe borrows all it 
confers, as the good wife makes her husband 
a Christmas or birthday present with the money 
he supplies. The world's complexions are 
reflections, and its voices are echoes, which ac- 
cord with the states of our deeper life. The 
birds have stolen our songs, and are only pass- 
ing them back, or only they hear them who are 
in tune with them and make like strains in their 
own hearts. A healthy tongue imparts the 
sweetness to sugar ; and, if that member be 
foul, the bees of Hymettus can gather nothing 
to our taste. To a farlty eye other beauty is 
no more beautiful; and to a defective ear all 
music is no music. The face that looks out 
upon you from the mirror is your own ; and the 
universe is but a larger mirror, wherein we see 
ourselves. To the empty soul the world is a 
vacuum, and all seems on the eve of collapse, 
but to the full soul it is charged and surcharged 
with beauty and life, and trembles with pent 
forces. A sufficing selfhood subordinates cir- 
cumstances, and overflows and inundates all 
situations with its own beauty, serenity, and 
satisfaction. The great are contented any- 



CONTENTMENT. 147 

where ; deem all fortune good fortune ; cannot 
be caught in darkness any more than the glow- 
worm that carries his own light ; have the world 
painted from their supply of fine colors ; en- 
chant all times with the precious magic of their 
natures: for they are not dependants and beg- 
gars, but sovereigns and all-sufficient to endow 
the world and the times with an air of peace. 

The prime secret of contentment is a fulness 
of life constituted of noble qualities, the law 
of which is a deep harmony and peace. The 
ages have furnished men and women, whose 
names are dear to our lips, who did not need 
to run away from themselves ; and did not want 
to do so. Life abounded with them ; and what 
would they more ? The poorest man of history, 
as we well remember, still talked of " my peace " 
and ik my joy ; " for his life was full and rich 
and could not be distracted by events. 

" Sunshine was he in a winter's day ; 
And in midsummer, coolness and shade." 

Who can think of Plato standing on the corner 
of the street and meditating how he might elude 
himself ? — Plato, who had but to sit still in the 
centre of his own lofty and cultivated nature, 
and the universe crowded to entertain him ! 



148 AT OUB BEST. 

Who recalls Wordsworth as one running round 
with hat in hand, begging of untried scenes and 
sounds a pittance of respite from present unrest? 
— him, whose life was sufficiency and repose, 
like that of Nature. It was Channing who could 
write in his early years, " I am independent of 
the world ; " but he was so because he had built 
a world of his own of better and stabler and 
more sufficing material ; or, rather, because he 
had found and entered the real world, of which 
this that we see is but a dim and crude shadow. 
After the siege and capture of Megara, some 
one asked Stilpo whether he had not suffered 
particular damage in the plundering : to which 
he made answer, " There is nobody can rob 
Stilpo but Stilpo." His wealth was himself, 
and self-protected. His riches were not of this 
world, and did not lay open to prowlers and 
purloiners. Whatever was taken was a matter 
of comparative indifference, since he was left ; 
that is, the self-poise and riches of character set 
all else in the relation of trinkets, or the rattles 
and straws that please children, as they who 
have the light of the sun can spare the stars, or 
as the sense of immortality subordinates days 
and events, and we waive slight matters by say- 
ing, " 'Twill be all the same a hundred years 
hence." 



COOTEOTMEISTT. 149 

Greatness is peace. Fine qualities suffice 
themselves. Beauty always bears the air of 
self-content, — not of vain self-complacency, but 
a perfect poise and satisfaction, like that which 
attends all true conditions. What would the 
lily be but the lily ? All high art strikes one 
as in a state of rest, and directly calms the 
appreciative beholder by drawing him into its 
own serene state. A perfect picture, or statue, 
or dome might well exist for itself, as if its 
being were the end of ends, and the charm of 
its serenity quite enough. We all sometimes 
find in our own centres such a fund of ideas 
and calm life that an invitation abroad would 
seem an impertinence ; any company would 
banish us to solitude ; any change would be 
a distraction. When we are full thus of a 
finely balanced being, the best powers in active 
play, we find ourselves quite able to dispense 
with both memory and hope, as the present 
realizes our prayers. There is an inner light 
that can dispense with the sun and not say, 
" All is dark I " It is a happy conclusion that 
the world is coming to at length, that heaven 
is holiness, or wholeness, as the word me&ns, or a 
full tide of life, and that flying to the stars has 
nothing to do with it. 



150 AT OUR BEST. 

It will greatly add to the pleasure of our tasks 
and promote contentment, if we can feel the 
presence and play of some high principle in 
all we do, as if there were an angel in every 
act. The soul delights in its own overflows. 
The conscience is never set forward to the front 
and made leader of our forces in vain. Content 
is in rising into true and worthy relations in 
every deed, as the needle's rest is in finding 
its north in every place. We are constituted to 
feel the charm of the elevated motions of our 
nature, as if we were to be thus lured and kept 
up to the best levels, and so well paid as we 
go on with our duties that we should forget the 
past and the future in the satisfaction of the 
moment. He is the happy and satisfied work- 
man who sees character and credit reflected in 
his work. The merchant's store stands under 
an approving and protecting sky, and invites 
him like a palace, if he feels his honor every 
time he enters it ; and, like one who goes for 
a promised favor, he will not be loath to turn 
his feet in that direction. Labor and trade are 
enchanted and held in a contented and serene 
frame by their moral aspects. It is our shams 
and cheats that shame and distract us ; and we 
shall impatiently endure them as low expedients, 



CONTENTMENT. 151 

not to our better liking or good name. Dishon- 
esty sets us into Hades, where none care to take 
up their abode ; and so we play doubly false, add- 
ing crime to crime, thrusting a bold and reckless 
hand into what is not ours, that we may the 
sooner win and run from our sharp discontent. 
The game is not itself a satisfaction, like an hon- 
est calling, but a torment from which we would 
fly, even stealing our wings to hasten flight. 

Our relations to our callings and crafts are 
quite too low and sordid, too selfish and carnal, 
too negative and neglectful of the soul and all 
the better motives, like leaving life out of the 
aims of living, and need revision in the inter- 
est of our higher nature. A merely cent-per- 
cent aim in work belittles us, and affords us 
no solace. The worship of money is not a 
manly devotion. Gold is a low end. But it "is 
less sufficing still to regard labor simply as a 
carnal prudence, a purveyor to our stomachs 
and procurer of more shirts and better shingles 
to cover us. For the Genius of the lower neces- 
sities, with lash in hand and ready for use, wears 
ever a cold and unwelcome face, and is a driver 
with whom we can hardly make amicable terms. 
Who likes this hard dictation ? Gods are we, 
and yet in slavery to bread-and-butter ! Immor- 



152 AT OUR BEST. 

tals, but bound band and foot by beds and din- 
ners ! Who will pull his oar and turn his spit 
thus in contentment ? The motive is too low 
to cheer and satisfy. Let us set our tasks in 
nobler lights, and put our higher life into them ; 
let us honor our work, and derive honor from 
our workmanship ; and servitude will give place 
to freedom. There will ever a beautiful angel 
look out upon us from every honest and fine 
piece of handicraft, or noble dealing, or honest 
word ; and we shall sing at our tasks, and take 
the first and best instalment of our recom- 
pense out of the deed itself, if we will make 
a fine art of it. The farmer's reward should 
consist largely in the straightness of his fur- 
row ; the inventor's, in the perfection of his 
machine ; the tailor's, in the fit of his coats ; 
the teacher's, in the promptitude and correct- 
ness of the pupil's answers ; the housekeeper's, 
in the tidiness and homeness of the house, so 
that the refined will delight to come to it; 
the poet's, in his 

" Mellow metres more than cent per cent ; " 

and the painter's, in the life and power of his 
pictures, which happily react on his own sensi- 
bilities, as, according to mythology, Pygmalion's 



CONTENTMENT. 153 

beautiful ivory statue of woman enamoured him, 
and, in answer to his prayers, was endowed by 
the gods with life, and became his bride. Many 
a man's work is his sweetheart ; and every man's 
may be, if he will give the best part of himself 
to it, — his thought and character. When our 
deeds are our children, the offspring of our love 
and choice, and not bastards, we shall dote on 
them and find in them a true happiness and con- 
tentment. When our toiling and trafficking are 
faithful, and fair as the open day to look at, and 
speak our praise and carry everywhere our cred- 
itable introduction, we shall find the busy days 
and years are none too long, and that work is its 
own sufficient reward. The pay is instant, and 
guaranteed by a better purser than the banks 
employ. 

We cannot say it too often, nor with undue 
stress, that to the right laborer who puts his 
whole soul into his work, the hammer's stroke 
will be music ; the chirp of the smoothing 
plane, a song as of a lark or bobolink ; the wash- 
ing of dishes, a pastime ; hoeing of potatoes, 
a fine sport ; wood-chopping, poetry ; and that 
the worthy writer's unfolding sentence will 
glow before his eye like a line of morning light ; 
and the statesman's honest service to the pub- 



154 AT OUR BEST. 

lie, morally worthy an Aristides or Washing- 
ton, will be a sacred delight to his mind and 
heart. 

But labor shall make still further gain of con- 
tentment, by seeing itself in its remoter relations 
and uses. Every task, that is legitimate, is 
linked to the universe and subserves high ends. 
All work has a humanitarian and honorable 
aspect ; runs parallel with the aims and uses 
of Providence ; shares the dignity of Nature's 
processes ; and every true worker is fellow to 
all the ranks including the Deity himself. Why 
hold ourselves so cheap, and carry our heads 
down, and wish we had something worthy to 
do ? For, if we will only see it, our station is 
already sublime. Is not the locksmith a high 
custodian of valuables, and, with Morpheus, a 
patron of sleep ? Does not the bootblack, like 
a humble creator, contribute somewhat to uni- 
versal beauty, — the wash and varnish of the 
world ? Shall not the evening lamplighter and 
the morning sun strike hands, as being in the 
same line of business? Does not the sailor hold 
nations together by drawing back and forth 
threads of all textures, and insure a system of 
exchanges that is tantamount to an equalization 
of climates and skills ? What is the coal miner 



CONTENTMENT. 155 

doing but working that high miracle of creating 
June in December, or bringing Florida into all 
the regions within the snow-line, for our good- 
cheer ? or is he not supplying motive power, — 
manageable wind and tide, — to bring and carry 
commodities, and take us to our friends and to 
the ends of the earth ? Drag him from his place, 
dark and obscure as it is, and where will be the 
bland air of your parlors with the mercury down 
to zero outside, and your journeys with the 
speed of eagles and carrier-pigeons across con- 
tinents and oceans? Let him see that he is 
a benefactor, and take a manly and self-poised 
bearing. If any man reclaims an acre of sand 
by irrigation, or of bog by draining, and makes 
it green and blooming, let him carry his head 
erect on his shoulders, and see that his work is 
not unworthy of Him who, in meadow and 
prairie, has wrought to the same end. This man 
with his hoe and spade is a joint creator of 
beauty and provender for coming generations. 

All worthy tasks reach on thus, as if they fur- 
nished a strand of use and beauty to run co-ex- 
tensive with the whole web of our civilization. 
There is a minder in this world-mill, as in those 
at Lowell, who attends with a sharp and con- 
stant eye and keeps every thread in place to the 



156 AT OUR BEST. 

end. Providence is an economist of power and 
results, and what is once well done is done 
for ever. There is a soul in each good deed that 
is immortal. The farmer drops not a potato 
but it looks to muscle, and through muscle to 
mind, and through mind to the perfect destinies ; 
or the first and last of things are tied together. 
A word is more than air, as it passes our lips ; 
a blow tells on the planets ; our deeds are shad- 
ows of an eternal substance ; work is the only- 
prophet, and nothing is clothed with so much 
of dignity. Toil holds the ages and aeons in 
its debt, and should carry its head among the 
stars, and dwell in a state of perfect peace. 

Labor needs to look through a telescope to 
see its own merit in full. Going with a friend 
one day to see the new marvel, a steam-shovel, 
I observed to him that it was fellow to all the 
scholars and preachers in the land ; and, coming 
to an Irishman, on our return, who was spread- 
ing the last car-loads of dirt, dumped on forty 
feet or more of filling, I said to him, " So you 
are building a highway" " Yes," said he, " and 
for the Lord." This was, no doubt, a cheap 
reply, caught from an easy and old association of 
words ; any child might have said it ; but it 
need not have been cheap, but one of the grand- 



CONTENTMENT. 157 

est of answers ; and I would gladly believe 
that, for the once, Patrick rose to a full compre- 
hension of himself, and was shovelling there 
with a dignity and serenity like the shining of 
the stars. 

It is higher aims and better spirit and truer 
work that shall signify, and not so much addi- 
tional holidays and special privileges, of which 
so many of our restless toilers are in quest : still, 
respites for breath and pleasure are in order, 
and should be of frequent occurrence. The 
secret of a richer peace lies in an improved 
industry. Our eagles must show their gift of 
wings by lofty flights, and see and feel they are 
not buzzards. Self-respect is a desideratum ; 
but this comes only of self-fidelity and good 
jobs. The shirk knows nothing of the con- 
tentment of labor, but only of its weariness 
and impatience ; whilst the swindler at his task, 
whether with weights and measures, putty and 
paint, or what not, shall through shame desire 
to cut and run. Nothing satisfies but honest 
performance. In lieu of honor in the work, it 
is futile to squander on cigars, cups, revels, 
pleasures, saloons, and boon companions. The 
bargain is a bad one and will not stick. Instead 
of one demon, we shall then be pursued by two, 



158 AT OUR BEST. 

the ghosts of our bad work and our bad habits. 
The only remedy is to feel our manhood. If 
money is named in the bond, let the motive from 
day to day not be mercenary. It lies with the 
employer to draw the employed out of this low 
limbo, by establishing relations that bring esteem 
and friendship to the aid of service, disenchant- 
ing labor of the sense of servitude, setting in 
play the positive and willing powers, sharpening 
the eye to detect the best methods and finish, 
nerving the arm to faster and heavier strokes, 
and making ten hours seem not more than six. 

A peaceful life implies, further, a due balance 
of capacity and ambition ; or a ready and hearty 
and graceful agreement with necessity, on the 
terms it sees fit to impose. We need a willing 
respect for limits, as they are set in the na- 
ture of things, a good understanding with fate, 
a happy consent unto what must be, as an 
ancient, when told he must die to-day, said 
wisely, " It is well : I expected to die to-mor- 
row." To be beforehand with our lot is to 
be at peace. There is the true wisdom in the 
Persian poet's advice : — 

" Offer up thy heart to Him, 
Who else, unasked, will take it." 

The Mahometan prayer was framed in a lofty 



CONTENTMENT. 159 

and rational spirit, which it is the best of for- 
tune to have attained : " O God, make me to 
wish not the acceleration of what thou hast 
delayed, nor the delay of what thou hast accel- 
erated." The "not my will, but Thine be 
done," of the Nazarene, is in the triumphant 
key, and a clue to composure. And many have 
greeted thus what came, and won the victory of 
victories. I knew a farmer who thought all 
weather the best weather ; a barren year good 
as a fruitful one, as giving the earth a needed 
rest or sort of Sabbath ; and who never quar- 
relled with the qualities and capacities of the 
soil, but took it gladly as it was, and accepted 
white beans with the same grace that he would 
wheat. He had a song wherewith to welcome 
the stern New England winter ; and, in all 
states of earth and air, serenity attended him 
like an angel. His submissions were easy and 
graceful, or were none at all, as desire seemed 
always to be in advance of wisdom and duty. 
His concession was an instinct and ahead of 
calculation, and ever left his face short and 
cheerful. 

We can never too much admire the wisdom 
of Mahomet who, when the hill would not come 
to him, gracefully yielded and went to the hill. 



160 AT OUR BEST. 

There is no fate to the willing, as we conquer 
our enemy by taking his side. Blessed is the 
man who can contentedly give up what he must. 
But more blessed he who never sends his wishes 
and intents beyond his sphere, nor chafes at 
the view of heights he cannot scale ! Nothing, 
except virtue, is so friendly to contentment 
as modesty in our spirit and some reserve in our 
aims, since we shall thus outrun our expecta- 
tions and happily surprise ourselves by our own 
merits. What a folly is this incurable itch for 
offices beyond their reach, which distracts so 
many of our citizens of small calibre ! And often 
success is babyish, and dies broken-hearted for 
more success. Here is Brushsythe complaining 
among the hedges that he is not Scissors behind 
the counter ; Hobnail is wretched at the anvil 
because it is not an easel ; but the fine arts, for 
which he has no fitness, would only throw him 
into another fever of unrest. Competence is 
sore at not being affluence ; plainness sees only 
the beauty to which it was not born, and sighs and 
squanders health like a mess of pottage to com- 
pass the impossible ; talent struggles with destiny 
to become the genius it was not made, — wears 
a Byron collar, makes free of gin and green tea, 
and submits to the " contortions of the Sibyl, 



CONTENTMENT. 161 

without her inspirations." But the chapter of 
discontents is endless; and it must suffice to 
name once more the remedy for this phase of 
the disease, — the just balance of capacity and 
ambition. Let us respect and not force the 
laws of nature. Let us shorten the demand, if 
we cannot increase the supply. Contentment 
is by wise limitation. Burns found it through 
the fine instinct and self-poise of his nature, and 
sung, — 

" What tho' on namely fare we dine, 
Wear hodden gray, and a' that." 

And if he had done his best, and come to a just 

understanding of his case, we cannot too much 

commend 

" Honest John Tompkins, 
The hedger and ditcher, 
Who, though he was poor, 
Didn't want to be richer." 

There is one more source of a deep and real 
content in life, open to all, that will bear nam- 
ing in this connection. It is of the utmost 
importance to hold open and constant rela- 
tions with the benefits of the universe, which 
are fine and abundant, and will always give 
the appreciative rest. The man who is well 
set against the best side of the world, which 

is ever a region of peace and a paradise of joys, 

11 



162 AT OUB, BEST. 

has found a realm of high repose. Need I name 
such obvious attractions and solaces as beauty, 
sunshine, the spirit of the woods, the grandeur 
of mountains, the morning and evening and 
midnight, love that pervades like a sweeter air, 
virtue, poetry, piety ; and, above all, God, who 
touches all things with his infinite rest but to 
stay their chaos and draw them into serenity ? 
To what calmness and satisfaction does not the 
soul of things invite ! Nature is serene, and our 
chafed and jaded citizens find life set to a more 
composed air and energy by frequent contact 
with her spirit : in no haste herself, she checks 
the flurry and fury of our habits and insures a 
lofty calmness. She administers sedatives to 
body and soul. There is an absence of flurry 
even from her motion and velocity. The eagle is 
said to escape atmospheric tumult by rising into 
an upper calm that is always accessible ; so there 
are blest Arcadian retreats in all climates and 
countries for the people who will seek them, — 
as Dante said, in his exile, " Shall I not speculate 
on most delightful truths under whatever sky 
I may be ? " I know of no content so sufficient 
as that of unity with Providence, as if here the 
aspiring heart broke into its full bloom, and 
peace had secured all needed guaranties. 



CONTENTMENT. 163 

Who shall measure man's privilege in this 
respect? It is a system of benefits in which 
he is set. We name one charm, and there are 
ten thousand waiting to be named, and as good 
as the best. The streets are paved with dia- 
monds. Rubies hang on the grass every morn- 
ing, or the diamond-fields are moved to our very 
doors and all may see them who have good 
eyes. The air is vital with aromas, and music is 
wafted on every breeze. Every summer is Par- 
adise, as every open and sweet soul well knows ; 
and winter, after all the hard names we please 
to give it, has its spectacles to please and inspire. 
Every hill and mountain is a Parnassus, where 
the Muses sit in state, and wait to touch with 
their magic wands all who come in love. The 
day is deep and full, and the hours are angels. 
What a flowing tide of life sets in upon us from 
the past and the present, as if we were each 
the focal point toward which genius has shot 
its light and power! All things are ours, — 
the poems of the ages, the stars in the sky, 
and the Spirit that is before and after and 
over all. The universe is a gift hurled into 
our arms to own and cherish. Immortality 
spans our life like the perfect dome of day and 
night, and our way lies through starry arches. 



164 AT OUR BEST. 

Give us a sense of what belongs to our lot, and 
Croesus will seem poor and royalty a beggar's 
privilege. Bring us back from our petty plights 
and foolish games of blown bladders, to which de- 
generate times have lured us, and install us in 
full possession of our estates, and how can we be 
other than grateful and content day by day ? 

But the perfect climax of this felicity is to 
sustain relations to the good in things evil. 
Wisdom has been rightly called the art of find- 
ing compensations, or of seeing what is al- 
ways left when this or that is withdrawn. 
Wisdom is recognizing, with perpetual com- 
placency, that the bad is good, that the worst 
is often the best, and that never is there a 
pound taken out on one side but there is a 
pound put in on some other, — as Thomas Ful- 
ler wrote, to suggest some comfort to his coun- 
trymen in their half-sighted griefs : " When the 
sea grows shallow on the shores of Holland and 
Zealand, the channel waxeth deeper on the 
coasts of Kent and Essex." 

Give me my possible refuge in the good, and 
the evil is instantly reduced to the shadow of 
my fine citadel. If I am not asked to the party, 
why need I lose the evening? I may have a 
good time with my books, an earlier bed, better 



CONTENTMENT. 165 

sleep, and less headache to-morrow morning. 
If the winter is stern and deals hardly by our 
flowers and fingers, does it not much more than 
balance the account by fertilizing our wits ? for, 
to quote Mrs. Barbauld, — 

" Souls are ripened in our northern sky." 

If you missed a city culture, you gained a good 
and wide adhesion to Nature, and grew like a 
hardy child at her breast, which must be re- 
garded as the prime blessing of life ; and you 
may go to town with the best preparation for 
its business and offices and honors, and will 
often hear it said by the observing that city wit 
is mostly country born and bred. If we are 
plain-looking, which in this age of disregarded 
laws of body and spirit is more than possible, 
we escape, like those who have outgrown their 
youthful bloom, the peril of vanity, and shall 
have our emphasis placed on better things, as Du 
Guesclin said, " Since I am so ugly, it behooves 
that I be bold ; " or as Pope said, " If my per- 
son be crooked," — he was a hunchback, — " my 
verses shall be straight." Defect serves as a 
spur ; or, rather, Nature will equal herself by 
opening some other stop in her organ for the 
one that is closed. When was not the loss of 



166 AT OUR BEST. 

cakes and confections the gain of the stomach ? 
When Sydney Smith went to dine with a 
brother clergyman, and a woman who had just 
come into the kitchen to serve for the occasion 
threw the soup out of the back door, thinking 
it was dirty water, — the good divine set all 
content and at ease by his broad and bland 
philosophy, saying, " The loss of the soup is 
the gain of our stomachs and wits." Horace 
gratefully mentions that poverty drove him to 
poetrjr, and poetry, besides being an inner well 
of flowing wines, had introduced him to Varus, 
Virgil, and Maecenas ; and, we may add, to all 
the scholars of the ages. Diogenes, one of the 
odd and wise ones of Greece, of whom Alex- 
ander said, " If I were not Alexander I would 
be Diogenes," — he, of an exile, became a phil- 
osopher. The world must thank a cruel per- 
secution and old Bedford jail for Bunyan's 
Pilgrim and his heroic trip. Are the times 
revolutionary ? Then vast seas of stagnation 
will be broken up ; for War's ugly front has 
always a better rear, as sunlight bursts in 
after the storm. The severe epochs of the past 
have been those in which the best seeds have 
been planted and fostered ; art and poetry have 
been rock flowers, and grew in wild conditions ; 



CONTENTMENT. 167 

whilst religion has been tested and refined 
through martyrdom. 

There is no more pleasing piece of autobiog- 
raphy in literature than that in which Montaigne 
sums up the benefits of his bad memory ; and, 
since most of us are blessed with the same 
trouble, it may be well to know how to regard 
it. For this end, nothing can better serve than 
a paragraph from the outspoken and sensible 
Frenchman : " Nature has furnished me in my 
other faculties proportionably as she has unfur- 
nished me in this : I should otherwise have been 
apt implicitly to have reposed my wit and judg- 
ment upon the bare report of other men, with- 
out ever setting them to work upon any inquisi- 
tion whatever, had the strange inventions and 
opinions of the authors I have read been ever 
present with me by the benefit of memory. 
Also, by this means I am not so talkative, for 
the magazine of the memory is ever better fur- 
nished with matter than that of the invention ; 
and, had mine been faithful to me, I had ere this 
deafed all my friends with my eternal babble . . . 
Another obligation I have to this infirm mem- 
ory of mine is, that by this means I less remem- 
ber the injuries I have received ; insomuch that 
(as the ancient said) I should have a protocol, 



168 AT OUR BEST. 

a register of injuries, or a prompter, like Darius, 
who, that he might not forget the offence he 
had received from those of Athens, so oft as he 
sat down to dinner ordered one of his pages 
three times to whoop in his ear, ' Sir, remember 
the Athenians ; ' and also the places which I 
revisit, and the books I read over again, still 
smile upon me with a fresh novelty. And it is 
not without good reason said, that he who has 
not a good memory should never take upon him 
the trade of lying." 

The universe is equitable, the world is bal- 
anced to a nicety, and every man should see 
that he cannot fail to get his due. No man 
fares worse or better than he ought. A true 
equation is sure ; or the scales are perfect, 
and, in the long run, never tip the wrong 
way. You and I have no just complaint to file 
against Fortune, which has always dealt with us 
with the last degree of fairness. If we have 
failed, then we have slighted sojne law that is 
still friendly in its rigor ; have trusted to luck ; 
have tied our ends with a rope of sand ; have 
mixed our glue without the sticking property ; 
have made our own conditions instead of accept- 
ing those of the universe, and success on our 
terms would have been a return to chaos, or 



CONTENTMENT. 169 

the letting loose of chained panthers from whose 
ravages we should at length beg deliverance. 
Every secret shall be laid open ; every flaw 
in our chain is counted ; every fit stone shall 
be set in the temple ; no gold will be lost 
out of the perfect sieve ; and every deed, good 
and bad, will come to its reward, because it 
is itself the seed of its own harvest, and the 
connection is vital and never broken. Every 
act pays itself in its own coin, which does but 
reveal the intimacy of Providence in all affairs. 
The universe is no game of chances, but the 
unity and sequences are perfect. Life is hedged 
in and guarded by law which has more than 
Saxon strictness ; and no one's tether is too long 
or too short. It is not our business to complain, 
but to obey ; and in obedience we shall sur- 
prise and capture the secret of contentment. 



170 AT OTJK, BEST. 



VI. 

COURAGE. 

" A valiant man 
Ought not to undergo or tempt a danger, 
But worthily, and by selected ways. 
He undertakes by reason, not by chance : 
His valor is the salt to his virtues, 
They're all unseasoned without it." 

Ben Jonson. 

u The strength of man sinks in the hour of trial ; 
But there doth live a power that to the battle 
Girdeth the weak." 

Joanna Baillie. 

" Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, 
And by the Present's lips repeated still, — 
In our own single manhood to be bold, 
Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will? " 

James Russell Lowell. 

IKE all human qualities courage has many 
"^^ phases and degrees ; begins low and mounts 
high. There is a courage that is not courage, 
which is clearly the lowest round of this ascend- 
ing ladder : it is mere vanity and puerile and 
ridiculous affectation. Falstaff was bloated with 
this out-of-danger bravery ; and any satirist can 
find it in abundance in any company of fifty 



COURAGE. 171 

persons. In our parlors we are all heroes, I 
make no doubt, and care not a feather for ghosts 
or hobgoblins, but to make a mock of them, 
as we sit before finely blazing fires, and have 
around us willing ears to listen as we chant so 
coolly our brave cantos ; but how would it be 
if we were caught alone in a moonless night, or 
in some wild jungle ? We have all heard how 
the mice in their holes speak in jest of cats, and 
this trait seems to have ascended into better 
ranks. 

A holiday valor can boast a high origin. Pa- 
troclus was want to put on Achilles's armor, and 
mount his war-horse, and swell with bold conceits 
before the gaping crowd. But when the grim 
war-god summoned to battle, Patroclus quickly 
slipped out of the great hero's armor and off 
his horse, and was no braver than some others. 
It was largely stage-play and fireworks for the 
imagination. And not otherwise was it with 
the Jew, whose mock valor is so graphically 
sketched in the Spanish " Chronicle of the Cid," 
— a book worthy of the Spain of a better day. 
" The body of the Cid, at his death, looking so 
firm and comely that it seemed as if it were yet 
alive, was seated in noble knightly attire in an 
ivory chair in the monastery of San Pedro de 



172 AT OUR BEST. 

Cardena, with his sword Tizona in his left hand, 
where it remained ten years. Meanwhile, a 
Jew, finding himself alone in the monastery, 
began to say, ' This is the body of that Cid 
whom they say no man in the world ever dared 
to take by the beard. I will take him by the 
beard now.' And he put forth his hand to pull 
the beard of the Cid ; but before his hand could 
reach it, God, who would not suffer this thing 
to be done, sent the Cid's spirit into the body, 
and the Cid let the strings of his mantle go from 
his right hand, and laid hand on his sword 
Tizona, and drew it a full palm's length out of 
the scabbard. And when the Jew saw this, he 
fell upon his back for fear, and began to cry out 
so loudly that all they who were without the 
church heard him." 

The world is full of heroes before dead Cids, 
who are cowardly enough before living ones ; 
which is proof of its poverty in the true riches 
of courage. It reckons without its host; or 
the coward is always in mask, tricking out his 
faint heart with the vanity of brave-looking cock- 
ades and laying many high colors over his white 
blopd. You shall never count on a boaster in 
any sphere. Let us beware of the fool of prom- 
ises. Real power is content to know itself, and 



COURAGE. 173 

pluck discards a bell. When two artists came 
before the Athenians to offer themselves to su- 
perintend the erection of some public build- 
ing, one spent a half day in boasting of his 
capacities ; and the other quietly stepped forward 
at the conclusion of these empty superlatives, 
and said, " What this man promises I will do." 
We need not add to whom the Athenians gave 
the job. 

A trifle above this there is a courage that is 
only a choice between fears. It is a forced solu- 
tion of an ugly problem, and looks well if we are 
not in the secret of its painful constraint. It 
would not, dare not, but must. It is simply 
making a virtue of an unwelcome necessity and 
electing its risk, — whether to do or die ; whether 
to burn or drown, as with ill-fated passengers ; 
or, if one be a bashful young man, whether to 
endure the pain or speak to the young lady who 
is standing plump on his corns ; whether to face 
the perils of camp and field in war time or the 
derisions of the neighborhood and Christabel for 
staying at home ; or, if it be a timid young lady, 
whether to go into the church or deny the min- 
ister, to do either of which she has about an equal 
dread ; or, if it be almost any one of us, whether 
to tell a costly truth or tell a lie. It is a force- 



174 AT OUR BEST. 

put bravery, or the pressing of fear to an issue. 
" Whomsoever I shall find," said the Grecian 
Hector, " crouching far away from the battle, 
it shall not be possible for him to escape the 
dogs ; " and so the greater fear drove to the less, 
and the most white-livered dared to fight, or 
did not dare not to. When the question is cour- 
age or court-martial, the soldier, if a coward, will 
be likely to choose the first ; that is, he will ven- 
ture rather than be disgraced ; which is to say, 
he has like all cowards more vanity than any 
other quality. This bravery is a low prudence 
and always a last resort ; and we have it in the 
stag at bay, and in any one of us making a 
reluctant choice between two terrors. That is, 
there is no proper or positive valor here what- 
ever. 

Another of these lower rounds is a secondary 
or following courage "You first, and then I 
will," is language the world over, and familiar as 
the sky. If there is ice to be broken, somebody 
else must break it ; and it is noticeable there is 
sometimes a refusing to follow when the ice is 
broken. It is a courage that likes a safe distance 
from danger, and the best of chances to beat a 
retreat. In social relations this courage wants 
curiosity conquered and got out of the way, a trial 



COURAGE. 175 

made to test the acceptableness of whatever is 
proposed, and time and opportunity given for 
inward rallying and getting its horses fully in 
hand, and then it may or may not venture. It 
has no self-sufficing and leading-off quality. It 
is always in the rear, and makes lawyers who 
are afraid to stir without precedents, and who 
turn the court into a plea of echoes ; editors and 
politicians who are nobody till they have heard 
from the party leaders and studied the platform ; 
doctors who are nothing till they have got it 
from the regular faculty whether to blister or 
bleed, physic or vomit, stuff or starve ; and 
ministers, wary of making points as elephants of 
crossing bridges, till they have heard from the 
synods, councils, and pews. It waits on security, 
courts allowance, and never invites itself, nor is 
there of its own accord and in advance of as- 
sured immunity. It is servile, having the instinct 
of a flock of sheep. 

How few are the devotees of fashion bold 
enough to be in the front rank ! They will be a 
trifle late, and first suffer the public eye to lose 
a sense of the ridiculous in the customary. New 
York is a year behind Paris, and the rest of the 
country a year or two behind New York : any- 
thing by degrees and a little late, however inele- 



176 AT OUE, BEST. 

gant, absurd, and harmful, — paper shoes or 
cowhide, hats from a vanishing point to an 
amplitude to crown any giantess of fable, nar- 
row skirts or huge bastions. We know not what 
outrages of good taste might be imposed on our 
wives and daughters, give time dfor drilling 
adepts and making gradual approaches. We 
expect anything. And even the lords of crea- 
tion are not always lordly and beforehand with 
themselves and their opportunities. Here are 
young men challenging each other to spend the 
evening with Bacchus in Old Griper's cellar, but 
make no headway as they walk a dozen times up 
and down the street. Not one of them has a 
positive character. They were all born to be 
led. But young Spartacus, who is by inheri- 
tance a pioneer, comes along, and they have a 
leader ; and now all goes well, or ill. There are 
many sheep among us, but few lions, — a Joshua, 
Leonidas, Luther, a Boadicea, Genevieve, or 
Joan of Arc, only once in a century. 

Another grade of this attribute is a rough, 
stout, animal valor. Byron said he " liked some- 
thing craggy to break his mind on ; " and these 
born bruisers can only feel themselves in ven- 
tures and perils and the motions of prowess. They 
like the desperate, and make a toy of risks. 



COURAGE. 177 

The delight of the animal sort is to feel their 
hair rise and their blood creep, as dogs and cats 
and cocks find their pastime in fighting. There 
are the groundlings, the men of the prize-ring, — 
the Tom Hyer and Heenan class, — who begin to 
feel good when well-nigh pounded to a jelly, and 
venture to the brink of a horrid death. There 
are born lion-hunters, whalers, dalliers with 
arctic icebergs, peerers into volcanic craters, the 
forlorn-hope heroes, Putnams to drag out the 
wolves just for fun, Sam Patches for idiotic 
plunging, Blondins for bold and absurd balan- 
cing, buccaneers and banditti, freebooters and 
filibusters. But these are not to be entirely 
counted out as useless ; for they are the sub- 
duers of jungles and tamers of dragons, which 
gentlemen in broadcloth and clean shirt-bosoms 
would never have attacked. If Nature has an 
Augean stable to cleanse, she makes that a 
Hercules shall be born, as she sent fire and fury 
to jointly work up the first stages of the world. 
Pioneers that are more tigers than the tigers, 
and that out-catamount the catamounts, belong- 
to the system, and make way for the women of 
both sexes, and a milder and higher civilization. 
The grandsons of fire-eaters are mostly graceful 
and serviceable men enough, since the divine 

12 



178 AT OUB BEST. 

method is one of melioration, of the sod climb- 
ing to a soul in leaf and flower, and of brawn 
flowing into brain. But how to stop this refin- 
ing tendency at length is a serious matter ; for 
Nature seems to launch it and withdraw her 
hands, as shipbuilders launch ships and leave 
their fate to pilots. How to retain some drops 
of aboriginal blood becomes in due time a grave 
problem, — how to keep our eagles from hatching 
chickens. One can hardly believe, as he sees 
nice people in slippers and loose gowns, and 
watching for a cloud, and keeping their eye on 
the thermometer, and fumbling for their daily 
pulse, and consulting doctors, and chewing pills, 
and full of sighs and misgivings, that they are 
all that is left of the old Round Table Knights, of 
ancient Hengist and Horsa, Alfred and Ethel- 
red, of Spanish Cid, of Saracen, Huguenot, and 
Puritan ! 

But we will not make too much of our anxie- 
ties in this direction ; for the more the world is 
subdued, and all the rough ways are opened and 
- occupied, and fate is manageable on easier terms, 
the less need is there of a coarse animal valor ; 
and subsidence of a rude pluck may be in the 
perfect plan, like the cooling of the earth and 
the disappearance of mastodons. We find Dry- 



COURAGE. 179 

den long ago suggesting that this type of cour- 
age is a " virtue to be seldom exercised." 

However, the flesh is to be looked after with 
much concern whilst we are mortal. We cannot 
spare a single span from the column of life as 
Nature has cast it ; but must have the bottom if 
we would have the top. All the heroisms, to the 
last and finest degree, are somehow mounted on 
the body. The whole man is tied to his stomach. 
No man who is sick or frail can be so brave in 
anything, not in his art ideals, or prayers, or 
dreams, as if he were well and robust, and car- 
ried quantities of arterial blood ; for there is such 
a unity and wholeness to life, such a firm hooping 
and holding together of the entire system, such 
alliance and sympathy of the parts, that not even 
genius is emancipated and has its full liberty. 
Health is essential to make us equal to ourselves 
at any point of our ascending life, as there must 
be a perfect condition of the earth to exhale a 
perfect atmosphere, and supply fine sunrises and 
sunsets. Resolution derives from the muscles, and 
power is as the pulse. Even prayer has a carnal 
tinge, and reveals how the night or the day has 
gone with us, reports of our supper or dinner by 
its levity or gravity. The minister knows the 
high-livers of his congregation by the length of 



180 AT OUR BEST. 

their nap in church. Whoever reads Coleridge's 
" Ancient Mariner " with an open sense to all its 
sources can detect where the opium came in and 
where it went out, as some of Byron's stanzas 
and not others are said to " smell of gin." The 
low pulse of old age tells on the spirit ; and you 
need not look far to find some advancing and 
innovating manhood, some hero of reforms, on 
the eve of taking a lower tone with the flight of 
years, and pulling down his sails and setting his 
compass for some quieter haven. An old man 
observed to Agis that " all things here at Sparta 
are turned topsy-turvy." " If it is so," responded 
Agis, " it is agreeable to reason ; for, when I was 
a boy, I heard my father say that all things were 
then topsy-turvy, and he heard his father say 
the same." Those statesmen whose blood is 
water are always on board a glass ship-of-state, 
and just approaching within sight and hearing of 
the rapids ; and every stump-speaker indulges 
largely in the oratory of despair, if not from 
faith, then for effect, as touching a string that is 
sure to vibrate in the hearts of many voters. 

Heroes have mostly good constitutions and 
fine digestion, and great reliance on their bodies. 
Everj^body knows what a coward he is when he 
wakes in the small hours of the night ; how he 



COURAGE. 181 

misgives and thinks he is equal to nothing, and 
that to-day will be doomsday. The red tide 
is sluggish, the sensibilities are benumbed, and 
therefore the world has an ugly look since we 
are not weaponed to meet it. The clergyman 
thought when he went to bed he had a sermon ; 
but he sees at five o'clock on Sunday morning 
he has none. The orator wonders where is the 
brilliant oration he finished last evening. The 
merchant, as he wakes and looks out at the stars, 
sees the hopeful risk as hopeless. I find timid 
people think that a heavy rain, beginning at 
midnight, is likely to be another flood, and pray 
for a chance in a second ark. At low twelve the 
air is full of birds of ill omen that nobody sees 
at high twelve. The doctors live on the cowardly 
fears of people who are not sick, but are not 
well, as wanting the usual force of the vital 
circulations. So ill-health scatters all our brave 
ideas and aims, and leaves us puny and anxious. 
My body may not be myself; but I find we are 
fated to keep up a clog-dance. We feel each 
other as the Siamese twins might. I am weary 
all over at the same time, and sick through and 
through. If my flesh is jaded, my spirits lag; 
or the exceptions to this are so rare that the rule 
is proven. When the minister gets dyspeptic, 



182 AT OUR BEST. 

the people wonder what has become of his brave 
ideas and cheering hopes ; and green tea shows 
itself to be green tea in his sermon. A low 
diet, or a vicious diet, tells on the last limits of 
thought. " My friend," says Sydney Smith, 
" sups late ; he eats some strong soup, then a 
lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these 
esculent varieties with wine. The next morning 
I call upon him. He is going to sell his house 
in London, and retire into the country. He is 
alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His 
expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but 
a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All 
this is the lobster ; and when over-excited nature 
has had time to manage the testaceous incum- 
brance, the daughter recovers, the finances are 
in good condition, and every rural idea is effec- 
tually exploded." 

It may be humiliating to solve the problem 
of courage thus, with so much of a downward 
reference. It looks like paying too much toll to 
the senses. Immortals and gods are we, and 
yet hamstrung, or chained like galley slaves to 
these mortal drags ! But, whilst we are cooped 
in the flesh, it is wise to honor our conditions, 
and parry fate by going willingly and bravely 
along with it, and making a liberty of necessity, 



COURAGE. 183 

— as every farmer gracefully plants what the 
soil bids, wheat or white beans, and finds his 
reward in seconding and not in contradicting the 
lower dictations. It becomes us to sacrifice 
freely to the ruddy goddess, her gifts are so 
many and fine and indispensable, — as the good 
cheer of the eye, the major key of the voice, 
a step that charms like a dance, a vision that 
spreads gay colors on all things, a sky always 
clear with the wind west by north-west, endur- 
ance, insight, vitality, vim, and, withal, large 
volumes of courage to carry us wherever we 
desire. Health cannot be left out of our aims. 
The engineer cannot spare his coals and oil and 
perfect condition of all the gearing ; and every 
one has an equal need of a sound body. We 
must not be pimps and nurslings if we would 
dare and do. In short, would you know at what 
price health is still a bargain ? When you have 
paid for it everything but honor and immor- 
tality, — all your pet indulgences, brandy, hash- 
ish, snuff, green tea; late suppers and soft 
beds and delicious idleness ; Schnapps and 
Plantation Bitters and soothing syrups ; broad 
margins of profits from your daily business ; and 
those more positive values, a protecting purpose 
in life to confer self-respect and dignity and 



184 AT OUR BEST. 

shield from ennui, steady habits, good hours, 
plain diet, ample ventilation and frequent baths, 
and a conscience void of offence. 

But let us rise out of a carnal atmosphere and 
see our subject on some higher levels. Broadly 
stated, courage is a birth from competency, and 
cowardice from incompetency, real or fancied; 
and that which the flesh supplies, save to the 
lower orders of heroisms, is but a fraction of 
what is needed. It is mainly a question of 
higher equalities to the demands. Courage is as 
the features of the mind. What are we equal 
to ? That will decide what we are brave in ; 
for we are brave according as we have faiths, 
virtues, disciplines, skills, habits, the artillery of 
mind and soul to fall back on and rally to our 
service, as the duck who knows his web feet has 
no fear of the water, nor the bird of the upper 
air when he has once found his wings. Heroism 
is a matter of sufficiency. See how bold the 
skilled artisan is about all affairs of his trade ! 
and how independently the humble gardener in 
shirt-sleeves, who knows all about the planting 
and pruning and potting of flowers, confronts 
the rich landlord in broadcloth who knows noth- 
ing ! His knowledge is a throne, and makes him 
a bold dictator to ignorance. But in the parlor 



COURAGE. 185 

the scales would turn the other way, since skill 
would be reversed. Supply all the conditions of 
safety, and a man need have no more fear of a 
wild lion than of a wild gazelle. Paul Morphy 
was cool because he knew his game and had easy 
mastery of it ; but the chess-players thought he 
had no nerves. That ingenious spinner, Arachne, 
challenged Minerva, the goddess of household 
employments, to a contest at the loom, saying, 
" I am not afraid of the goddess : let her try 
her skill with me if she dare venture." " When 
I was in London," said Rothschild, " the East 
India Company had £800,000 of gold to sell. I 
went to the sale and bought it all. But I knew 
the Duke of Wellington must have it ; for I had 
bought a great many of his bills at discount." 
The great banker had no fears, because he had 
adequate facts. With these in hand, it was not 
a case for alarm and lying awake, any more than 
for the farmer to put in an extra ton of hay 
in the summer, when he knows his neighbor's 
cattle must have it in the spring ; or for Johnny 
to buy a ten-cent whistle on trust when he holds 
the secret that Tommy has fifteen cents burning 
in his pocket to pay for it. Make all the steps 
clear and certain of ingress and egress, as they 
were to JEneas, according to Virgil, and you 



186 AT OUR BEST. 

may venture a trip into Hades without a single 
throb of the heart. A sure footing and holding 
of the keys when the grim gate is past is enough 
to keep one's spirits up. 

The story of Scheherezade, the fictitious em- 
press of tale-tellers, whose world-renowned feats 
in this direction are the " Arabian Nights' En- 
tertainments," is a poetic contribution to our 
thought that courage is of qualification. The 
Sultan of the Indies, for some barbarous freak, 
had resolved to espouse a new Sultana every 
evening, and have her strangled in the morning. 
His vizier was solemnly ordered to attend to this 
daily marriage and murder, with strict attention 
to every particular of manner and time. But 
how about the fair daughters of the first fami- 
lies, who each looked for her turn to be dragged 
to the sanguinary nuptials? They were seized 
and crazed with fear and consternation, — all 
save one, Scheherezade, the daughter of the 
vizier himself; and she, to the horror of her 
father and astonishment of all, insisted on be- 
coming the bride of this monstrous bridegroom ; 
and, after every dissuasion by all who loved her 
had proved in vain, the vizier, in the agony of 
despair, led her to the evening altar as if it 
were her morning bier. But she knew her 



COURAGE. 187 

secret, confided in it, and had no fears. For a 
thousand and one mornings she had the Sultan 
so absorbed in some entrancing story that she 
contrived to have but half told as the fatal hour 
arrived, that he had her spared to conclude it in 
the evening. And thus she charmed him with 
her tissues of fancy, which we still read with 
spell-bound interest, into an affectionate hus- 
band, — a method of carrying a point with the 
lords of creation that others than a Sultana 
might safely put on trial. But let us not miss 
the point of the narrative. The shrewd maiden 
knew her equality to the case, and courage was 
not unnatural even in what was deemed so 
perilous an undertaking. 

" After one completely draws 
All the lion's teeth and claws, 
Who need fear his helpless paws, 
Or his boneless, mumbling jaws % " 

Common life is full of brave qualifications and 
competences. We venture on our talents and 
attainments since we find our freedom and easy 
success in them. Abating what we must for 
some shy taints of blood, as if we were inheritors 
from foxes and hares, and some moments of 
panic to which all are liable, since there are 
terrors too sudden to be parried, it is then a 



188 AT OUR BEST. 

question of backers and ample supports whether 
we dare or dare not. The key to heroism is 
adequacy. Benumb any sense, as the eye or 
ear, and there follows embarrassment, because 
loss of needed power. We pay a heavy tax on 
a club-foot, or squint eye, a dwarfed or over- 
grown stature, or cream-colored hair, because 
with the ill-bred and gaping world these set us 
at a disadvantage too great for any, save one in 
many thousands, to meet and overcome. I know 
a woman of fine mind and spirit who, having 
always lived in the country, is haunted by some 
whim about awkwardness, that holds her from 
venturing to visit the city ; and desire often 
turns pale, and withdraws at the thought of 
contending, with ill outfit, against adverse and 
trying situations. Who can stand serene and 
aplomb in company with a ragged or misfitting 
coat, or a dress or hat suggestive of Noah's 
flood? The superhuman and the super-eccen- 
tric may be equal to this, and have no blush or 
flurry ; but the rest of us have a debt to the 
lower felicities, and are called to guard against 
the most external defects and disadvantages if 
we would go bravely on. 

But inward abilities are yet better, since 
they favor a deeper sense of safety. A central 



COUEAGE. 189 

mastery enchants and emboldens, like a higher 
health, and has a certain modest eagerness to 
put in its appearance. Greatness is entitled to 
exhibition, and is naturally moved by its own 
forces to enter the lists and come to trial, as 
light is under a law of radiation, and the 
" bushel " is an artificial restriction or stay upon 
Nature. From the child's fearless walk when it 
has found its feet, and the school boy's and 
girl's bold recitation when 'they have a sure 
lesson, to the Congressman's heroic speech when 
he has drunk deep at the fountain of civil philos- 
ophy and political history, — all generous outfit 
tells on the nerves and the heart and the will. 
We disperse timidities as we make conquest of 
aptitudes, as superstition flies before reason and 
science. Our fears accuse the perfection of our 
states, and so far our honor as our short-coming 
is of neglect. The secret is to mount our terrors 
by superiority ; to fight fear with power, wisdom, 
skill, experience, as we conquer fate by more 
fate or higher. 

There are many witnesses to our sense of the 
close relation of competency and courage ; and a 
somewhat notable one is the profusion of our 
apologies and modest disclaimers. It is an inun- 
dation of these cheap and too often cowardly 



190 AT OUR BEST. 

expedients. They come as easy and thick as 
snow-flakes. And what is their philosophy but 
to depress standards and bring expectations 
within easy reach of our capacity, and so get 
the better of our trepidatioDS, as the boys bring 
the marks nearer to insure a perfect reliance on 
their store of powder ? We would set expecta- 
tion to a lower range, have the count on us 
reduced, pitch the tune to an easier key, and so 
mount ourselves on certainties and have no fears. 
What inevitable apologists are our orators with 
their " premeditated impromptus," so that we 
almost look to see these men, who " did not 
come to speak, but to hear," draw their speeches 
from their pockets and coolly proceed to read 
them. It is coaxing bravery by making victory 
more easy. Of course, every singer is unfor- 
tunate and out of voice just now, caught cold in 
the last shower, is not yet over an influenza, is 
out of practice, and only knows a snatch of this 
or that old song. With a few this may spring 
of vanity, may be a blinding the more to dazzle, 
as for stage effect they turn off the lights and 
then let them on, or as wives play on their 
husbands by promising a few old crusts for 
dinner, and finally bring on a roast turkey and 
plum-pudding. But mainly these disparagements 



COURAGE. 191 

betray modesty, and are in the interest of cour- 
age, or, what is the same thing, a sense of easy 
equality to the ease. Everybody knows how 
housekeepers are for ever rallying themselves 
thus by apologies ; how they will have us in all 
the secrets of the cook-room before we come to 
the table, — that the stove refused to bake, the 
chimney to-day drew down instead of up, the 
last barrel of flour was the worst that ever came 
into the house, and that Bridget forgot to 
sweeten the sweet-cake, or has mixed the tea 
and coffee in the same pot and made a mess of 
it, and that a thousand and one mishaps have 
befallen, which never occurred at any other 
time ; and all this to adjust the ideal to an easy 
compass, and have their nerves set to an assured 
composure. It is a roundabout way of bracing 
diffidence, or closing a bargain with valor. 

But apologies are not much in order. If they 
are set up to parry an exacting public, to disarm 
a severe criticism, to keep our fastidious friends 
in countenance, a little healthy contempt would 
serve a deal better* If they are compromises 
with shiftlessness and short-coming, contrivances 
to eke out a deficit that idleness ever incurs, and 
save the labor of outfit and mastery, a few sharp 
spurs set into the ribs of our ambition and in- 



192 AT OUR BEST. 

dustry would be wiser. If they are needed, then 
they are needless, as holding a secret that will 
publish itself in due time. And if they uncover 
what would else keep itself covered and foolishly 
trumpet defects, then they are the folly of fools. 
Whilst, by the sure play of Nature's law of like 
from like, they educate fear and keep up habits 
of temerity, as dosing every little ailment re- 
duces the tone of health and drags to the grave 
there is an effort to shun. One likes to meet a 
courage that can let apologies pass. Heroes die 
without a groan. The brave will see an army of 
ghosts, and have never a word to say about it. 
Even sciatica and toothache and colic have been 
known to be silent. And, moreover, let us pre- 
sume, as we well may, that all sympathy for 
defects worth having need not be bid for, but 
will have the grace to volunteer itself. Let us 
have unsolicited pity or none. All in all, I sup- 
pose I could offer no better advice than to urge 
the purchase of padlocks for our apologetic lips 
at the next corner. 

But modesty, a low tone, absence of promises, 
a plain and simple habit, and somewhat retiring 
ways, are to be commended as befriending cour- 
age ; since they naturally favor the high advan- 
tage of ample basis. The English lords, very 



COURAGE. 193 

wisely one would say, wear common cloth, and 
hug the ordinary topics of conversation, — the 
markets, the weather, the crops, the newspaper 
gossip, and like petty and idle topics, - — since 
their lordships thus keep their promise below 
their capacity and easy performance, and have 
a ready courage. The philosopher likes to be 
found in his kitchen, as the modest orator speaks 
better from a low stand ; the great general is 
more free and easy with his epaulettes off ; the 
saint avoids a brassy trumpet ; and all sensible 
people hold themselves under a little reserve. 
It is an insurance against anxieties and fears to 
have thus made sure of competency. 

The antidote of fear is power ; and of this, I 
, make no doubt, we hold more already than we 
are apt to think ; that is, we are liable to be 
the dupes of distrust and the cowards of mere 
whim. We do not count enough on our sleep- 
ing energies; but are like those people who 
always move us to laughter, who set to hunting 
for their spectacles when they already have them 
on. The can't is often only in the thought ; 
while the can is in all parts of our being, but 
cheated of its credit and service. There are 
energies in a drop of dew, set them in the active 
form of steam, to lift tons and rive ledges of 
13 



194 AT OUH BEST. 

granite ; and this may be a hint, not improperly- 
taken, of the latencies of the soul. Socrates 
thought men were gods who had not found it 
out. What a power is the human eye, any eye 
of a thousand, when securely braced ! the ugli- 
est bull-dog slinks before it ; no lion can with- 
stand it ; in Mirabeau and Napoleon it could 
tame a mob and check a riot. 

Saadi said, " There is under every jacket a 
man." Burns thought there were many poets 
behind ploughs and in ale-houses. That we see 
greatness so often uncovered by mere accident, 
as it were, leads us to regard it as not uncom- 
mon ; and to believe there are many who have 
all the qualifications of courage, but have not 
courage as not having knowledge of themselves. 
A little custom serves for self-revelation. Where 
there is capacity, fear flies with a debut ; and we 
come to a second trial, and a third, with more 
composed nerves and a happier success. The 
lesson that is perpetually taught by a successful 
republic is one of trust in the people, in the 
prevalence of mother-wit and divining instincts, 
which are much safer guides than merely ac- 
quired lore. One need not be surprised that 
the late Emperor of France found an empress 
in a very humble walk, who, after a little of 



COURAGE. 195 

trial to get herself in hand, found a beautiful 
ease in the gayest court-circle of all Europe ; 
and there are more Eug^nies in the street. 
There are brave sailors and soldiers by scores 
in every town, give them fifty voyages and a 
hundred battles ; for what with the emergence 
of self and the discovery that the risks are 
chiefly imaginary, — it costing the enemy, as 
every soldier learns, a man's weight in ounce 
bullets to effect a successful shot, — their nerves 
are set to a sure composure. Every one becomes 
braver by habit and use ; or custom checks the 
wild strokes of the heart and tames the shyness 
of the eye. The most select company is no 
terror to those who have often been in it ; and 
almost any one of us has the needed gifts, and 
only lacks the best degrees of use. " Lycurgus, 
the old lawgiver, forbade the Lacedemonians to 
fight often with the same nations, lest the enemy 
should overcome fear by custom." He saw 
them all as heroes in the measure of their ade- 
quacy, but not by experience, which secret he 
meant to withhold. 

The lion in us is also at the command of the 
will, which is a rallying wand of such magic 
power that the transition it brings from coward- 
ice to courage is often the work of an instant ; 



196 AT OUR BEST. 

and, the will slipping its hold, we go down as 
swift as we came up. Thus every one knows 
how young ladies in reading-clubs often go on 
bravely with four stanzas of the five, or nine of 
the ten, which they are to attempt, and ridicu- 
lously fail on the closing lines. It is not uncom- 
mon with us to fight bravely with danger hand 
to hand, and to faint when the peril is over. I 
have known a country boy spend the evening at 
the village, a mile and a half from his farm-house 
home, and return bravely alone, with no moon 
or star to keep him company. By applying the 
force-pump of his will, he drew on a torrent of 
heroic spirit that would have sufficed to carry 
him into Brazilian jungles. He braced to a firm 
step, and heard his foot every time it struck on 
the beaten road. Without a flurry he quitted 
the last glimmer of the village lights, and cared 
not that the candles were out at the two or 
three homes he had to pass on his lonely way. 
He tramped heavily by the deep dark ravine on 
the right that led off into wide forests ; skirted 
the long reach of woods on the left with no 
abatement of valor; glided boldly by orchard 
and field, and on through the blackness of dark- 
ness to the door-yard maple, whose noon shadow 
slanted quite to the door he was to enter. What 



COURAGE. 197 

a hero of will ! But look again : instantly our 
brave has become a coward, has surrendered his 
will and fallen into the hands of his fancies, has 
lifted the gate of his heart and let off the valor- 
ous flood, and makes the last twenty paces with 
a press of palpitations as if he were nobody. 
And so it is the w r ill, or the want of will, which 
makes of us heroes or cowards. Our latent life 
lies at the mercy of volition. We are like those 
toys that must have a spring touched to bring 
out some hidden image ; or like sleeping giants 
that must be awaked by some incantation to 
be themselves ; that is, we hold a better nature 
in reserve which is at the disposal of high 
resolves. 

The fibre and fearlessness of Andrew Jackson 
were revealed in that eloquent purpose of his 
will, — " By the Eternal!" And any nature 
that shares this strong rudder pushes direct 
on the line of its choice into whatever tem- 
pestuous sea lies that way. Who is a man, 
in any high sense, but he that can brace himself 
with voluntary firmness against opposition and 
peril? He that will run is nobody, or is what 
most of us are. Even doggedness is respectable, 
if not agreeable ; and obstinacy, to the degree 
of dying for nothing, as whether a feather was 



198 AT OUR BEST. 

white or whitish, or a pin had a solid or adjusted 
head, or the orator said tweedle-dum or tweedle- 
dee, is a better failing than a timid servility. At 
all events, this vice is free of fear and no craven. 
Courage, moreover, is a prominent element in 
all the affections of our nature. Our fascinations 
render us unfearing, because they are positive, 
and because they magnify the ends to be gained 
out of all proportion to possible losses. As the 
word itself signifies, courage is cor-ago, or what 
we may term heart-motion ; and it characterizes 
all the inward states of choice, preference, ap- 
petence, ambition, cupidity, and lust ; is in all 
love, friendship, philanthropy ; comes with all 
high devotion to art, science, country, mo- 
rality, and God. We are heroes according 
to the measure of our various affections for 
objects and ends, and are quite capable of be- 
coming martyrs for mere toys by concentration 
of heart on them, as it is said that South-Sea 
Islanders will leap into waters peopled with 
hungry sharks to rescue an idolized palm-leaf 
hat. What adventurers for the love of gold ! 
And how well that it is so, since the shining 
lure leads on the race to many new conquests, 
near and far, on land and in the sea. According 
to Schiller's poem, the old king cast a golden 



COURAGE. 199 

goblet into the raging Charybdis, which should 
be his that would venture in and bring it from 
those wild and mysterious depths. Instantly a 
slender youth made the fearful plunge ! What 
a symbol of the guerdons that the world offers, 
— coals in mines, whales in the oceans, gold and 
silver in wild Californias and Australias, news 
to bring from central Africa and the arctic 
regions, — and of the ready courage that is sup- 
plied to the venture ! The ugly enemies — 
climate, fevers, explosions, ferocious beasts, 
savages, and cannibals — are not suffered to 
hinder. Sancho Panza, poltroon as he was, 
enlisted as the Don's squire, under promise of 
islands to govern ; and perpetually needed the 
lure to coax him on from peril to peril. There 
is a price that bays off all fear. There are El 
Dorados to command every degree of courage : 
with this one, it is a handful of confections ; 
with that, a cockade of fame ; and with another, 
a bag of gold. Cupidity is sure to carry us 
against all terrors. 

How heroic is the doting binary passion which 
we call love ! Cupid is painted as blind, or with 
bandaged eyes, to signify not that he is careless 
and foolish in choosing, but that he will see 
nothing that may cause him to misgive and turn 



200 AT OTJR BEST. 

back. He is bent on advance and conquest 
despite all risks, which he would not notice or 
would regard as nothing. To watch the bold 
play of this heroic passion is the height of all 
charms, except it be to feel it ; and hence much 
of our literature, surely the best and most read 
portion of it, turns on this point. No other 
interest has been treated with the same ampli- 
tude ; neither has it with the same poetic fire 
and fidelity, since every author has been, at least 
once, the hero he describes. He dips his pen 
into a central ink-pot, and writes not on hear- 
say, but as " one having authority." The an- 
cient classic of Leander and Hero has many 
a modern counterpart. That enamoured youth 
swum the Hellespont nightly between Abydos 
and Sestus, a swift tide of four miles, to spend 
an hour — and possibly more — with the fair 
priestess of Venus, who, kind spirit, set a torch 
on shore to mark for him a safe landing. The 
deed was long deemed impossible, — by such, I 
suppose, as had never felt Leander's rapt and 
brave impulse. But Lord Byron thought better 
of it ; and on a second attempt, attended by day- 
light and friends in a boat, swum the passage. 
But like feats are not uncommon through this 
unfearing power of the heart. In the mythol- 



COURAGE. 201 

ogy of the gods and heroes, there are ever 
appearing, in wild play, like strong lights on 
a picture, the daring romances of love. The 
curious in such matters may read at their leisure 
the stories of Apollo and Daphne, Venus and 
Adonis, Sappho and Phaon, Atalanta and her 
suitors, and Helena and her bold adorers. 

The annals of knighthood reveal similar heroic 
inspirations from a kindred source. It was largely 
the daring of love in tournaments, and not less 
in many single encounters between lance and 
lance. Often it was a purely insane venture of 
sentimentalism, of no credit to either party, — 
a great daring and ado about nothing ; which 
led Cervantes, in his famous satire, to confer 
on the ridiculous Don a not less ridiculous Dul- 
cinea del Toboso, for whose gratification and 
astonishment he attacked wind-mills, water- 
falls, flocks of sheep, and funeral processions, 
with equal valor and folly. But, giving satire 
its widest margin, there was still a truer regard 
for woman in chivalry than the world had 
known to that day, and a foretokening, in those 
wild courages of sentiment, of the bravery of 
a higher and better love. It is only another 
step to Enoch Arden and Evangeline. It is 
only a refinement on King Arthur and his gal- 



202 AT OUR BEST. 

lants that the modern Christian muse can set 
forth of love's adventures. And one sometimes 
has a half fear that myth and legend, with their 
high exaggerations, cannot be spared ; that our 
modern amours, save among the lowest classes, 
need heating and bracing thus ; that the heroic 
measure of love is no more to be found as of 
old on the highest plains of society, but a blood- 
less, timid, calculating, arithmetical affection 
instead, that wants in advance a count of silver 
spoons and gold dishes, an inventory of estates, 
and a reading of the old man's will. Love seems 
not as once to be sufficient unto itself, to be 
a whole world of its own, and full of sunset 
colors and romantic splendors. It has grown 
somewhat of a cent-per-cent affair, and gives 
an undue emphasis to tax-lists. Is this man a 
fortune, and this woman an heiress ? Then it 
will do to fall in love. Cupid has become a 
sharp-eyed fellow, and in finding eyes has lost 
his valors. But have him blind once more, with 
Cupid's all-seeing and all-biassed blindness, and 
he will be brave as ever, as we see among pea- 
sants and in our best novels. Love's true name 
is Hero and not Flummux ; and our young 
people, who misgive at the thought of tailor's 
and milliner's and merchant's and butcher's 



COURAGE. 203 

bills, have not been baptized into his name and 
spirit. Galen would recommend iodine to their 
need ; would breed in them more of the red tide 
of true passion, which fears not fire nor flood, 
nor humble cottages to begin life in, nor what 
hard work it may require to tug the boat for- 
ward into deep water and fair sailing. 

In all of its broader provinces, not less than 
as a duplex passion, love carries a brave im- 
pulse, having much the same blindness to all 
but the thing to be done, and doing that though 
the heavens were to fall. The list of unselfish 
heroes is long and creditable. It is something 
to venture for ourselves ; but there comes a 
time in the growth of the heart when we will 
venture for others, and then our courage is 
enchanted, and rises to the sublime and godlike. 
Sympathy breeds a higher order of heroism. 
Tie the heart to the people with an affirmative 
bond, and it will dare to the last degree, and 
give us a crop of Spartans to die for a nation's 
freedom, or of Howards to face contagion and 
pestilence, or any needed order of humane 
heroes. Demosthenes was timid save when 
pleading for Athens or Greece, and then no man 
was bolder. Great generals know this secret, 
and rally their troops on their broader relations. 



204 AT OUR BEST. 

Thus, Napoleon, in his African campaign, told 
his men that " forty centuries were looking 
down upon them from the Pyramids ; " Nelson 
issued his famous order that " England expects 
every man will do his duty ; " Cromwell con- 
jured with the Commonwealth ; and Washing- 
ton, with colonial firesides and a nation of un- 
born freemen. The gravity of the occasion was 
immeasurably increased thus, and braced cour- 
age in an equal proportion. The best educated 
soldiers, who can comprehend principles and be 
mounted on broad aims, are ever the bravest. 
And for this reason religion, introducing God 
and eternity, and a world of universal prin- 
ciples and aims, induces the very sublimity of 
heroism that will count life as nothing. 

Bind us to the universe, ally us to the moral, 
the true, the beautiful, the infinite, and thus 
befriend us by inevitable securities, as you will, 
and what need we fear ? Victory is protected, 
and all else is trivial, neither here nor there. 
" ' The best hearts, Trim, are ever the bravest,' 
replied my Uncle Toby." The weakness of 
wickedness is its isolation from the everlasting 
and secure ; that it is cut off and driven out 
from the inner citadel of the world and its 
friendly protections, like a man ostracized from 



COURAGE. 205 

the state and its aegis for some crime, or cast 
overboard from a ship to run his chance with 
waves and sharks. Sin has an instinct of having 
incurred secret and serious hostilities ; of being 
on the wrong side of Fate, in array against 
Providence, which it looks to meet in unequal 
contest at the next corner. Vice feels itself 
to be alone, or in a company worse than none ; 
vulnerable, but without armor ; sick, and there 
is no doctor. It is our better loves that have a 
sense of being shielded. Virtue has the uni- 
verse engaged to it, as the planets are under 
obligation to every grain of sand, and become 
their keepers, that they shall not fall away and 
be lost. All true souls are guaranteed safety ; 
and to such defeat is only another form of vic- 
tory, and failure a shorter road to success. 
There is no occasion for fear on the line of 
duty, for the defences are unconquerable. When 
they pointed Saint Theresa to her poverty to 
turn her from her exclusive devotion to mercy, 
she shamed them with the lofty truth and trust 
of her reply : " Theresa and two sous are indeed 
nothing ; but Theresa, two sous, and God are 
all things;" and bravely she went on with 
her work, having all faith in the bank she 
drew on. 



206 AT OUR BEST. 

History is full of similar texts from which to 
preach of the courage of felt relations to the 
universal. How brave is the young convert 
when lifted out of himself! How a prayer 
emboldens ! The French general, Montluc, 
confessed to the frequent rallying of himself 
in the presence of the enemy by a petition to 
his Maker. The martyrs have all been con- 
scious of this secure tie, and kept their ears 
open to the music of the death-psalm, and 
their eyes calm for the poetry of the curling 
flames, — as John Brown for the beauty of the 
Virginia hills, upon which he sweetly remarked 
on the way to his cross and crown. Reposing 
on the side of justice, purity, humanity, and 
God, we shall meet death in any form with 
heroic composure, or life of the severest order 
with serenity : we can thus equal the Apostles, 
Socrates, Latimer, Ridley, and Sir Thomas ' 
More. One likes to read of the good and 
trustful Sir Thomas as he appeared on the 
scaffold, it so commends one to seek out and 
ally himself to things eternal. When they had 
laid his head on the block, where it rested 
as quietly as if on a pillow, he discovered 
that the axe must sever also his beard, and 
ordered the headman to adjust it. " It is of no 



COURAGE. 207 

consequence," he was told : " give thyself no 
trouble." " It is of little consequence, indeed, 
to me," said More, " but it is a matter of some 
importance to you that you should understand 
your profession, and not cut through my beard 
when you had orders only to cut off my head." 
All the high anecdotes of dying heroes are more 
than sermons to us; foj the same principle of 
alliance between virtue and valor, faith and 
fearlessness, a sense of the infinite and of the 
secure, pervades all circles. 

It only remains now to further commend 
courage, by naming a few of its yet unnamed 
uses. And here we can only offer an inventory 
and not a discussion. Courage saves on many 
expenses that cowardice is ever incurring ; will 
not waste on wines for the expectant and crav- 
ing ; nor on too many and too costly dresses 
and coats for fashion's sake, journeys that should 
be postponed or foregone, houses a story too 
high for use or beauty, furniture beyond means, 
and funerals so costly that death becomes an 
exorbitant claim on one's estate ; courage is hus- 
bandry and economy down to the line of duty. 
It also shields from insolence, keeps rights 
respected and intact ; has the key turned against 
bores, in justice to time and nerves ; sets bullies 



208 AT OUR BEST. 

and encroachers easily back in their places. 
" If thou suffer a calf to be laid on thee," say 
the Orientals, " within a little they '11 clap on a 
cow," — but courage is in time and forbids the 
calf. It makes our look or word potent as bay- 
onets, and has a host of enemies in flight. It 
keeps the dogs from barking at us, the horses 
from rearing and backing, the bulls from tossing 
their horns, the very hornets and bees from 
menacing ; for all these have some mystic sense 
of how it is with us, and are respectful to the 
brave as they are not to the cowardly. It saves 
circumlocutions and valuable moments and 
hours, by going straight to its end. Pope 
said it cost Addison a sheet of paper and a 
nervous hour to write a dun ; and timidity 
always dallies, keeps from its point, and often 
goes home without doing its errand. There 
are men and women who go about much as if 
begging the privilege of life, having a painful 
apologetic air, always haunting the corners and 
by-ways, shrinking where they ought to ad- 
vance, peeping and peering where they should 
send eye-beams like ramrods, — whom a dash 
of heroism would brace and bless, and set into 
a new world. Courage takes counsel of its 
hopes ; waits for troubles, and does not borrow 



COURAGE. 209 

them ; thinks the bugs tick in the wall because 
they want to, and that all omens are old wo- 
men's whims ; and does not die a thousand 
times, but once only, and then with much grace 
and beauty. 



14 



210 AT OUR BEST. 



VII. 

THE HOME. 



" One small spot 
"Where the tired mind may rest, and call it Home. 
There is magic in that little word ! 
It is a mystic circle that surrounds 
Comforts and virtues never known beyond 
The hallowed limit." — Southey. 



' The first sure symptom of a mind in health 
Is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home.' , 



Young. 



" The parent love the wedded love includes, 
The one permits the two their mutual moods, 
The two each other know 'mid myriad multitudes." 

Margaret Fuller. 

ipOR a little time in the life of almost every 
boy there holds sway a roving or nomadic 
tendency. He is impatient of home ; will cut 
loose and be off : will have a taste of all adven- 
tures, join the wildest expedition that starts, 
try all the zones, and have a look at the whole 
world. His impulses are centrifugal ; and we 
may expect to wake any morning and find he 
has run away. This is no doubt a shrewd 



THE HOME. 211 

strategy of Nature in the interest of discovery, 
the conquest of virgin acres, new centres of 
civilization, general expansion. Too much cen- 
tralization is overcome by making the distant 
and untried magical to the lad's imagination. 
There are wanted pioneers, young and fearless, 
in a thousand quarters, — east, west, north, and 
south ; and through early impulses, stirring 
the best blood, Nature bids in opposition to 
the prayers, tears, hopes, and bribes of anxious 
mothers, who would tie their boys to their 
apron-strings. 

But the wayward instinct spends, itself at 
length, and our wanderer is seized by some 
deeper and more primal power of his being. 
The wild man, the rover, the victim of loco- 
motion, has his day, and another and superior 
man steps in ; and he will have a home. In 
lieu of a better habitation, man betakes him to 
a hutch of boards, a log cabin, a mud embank- 
ment thatched with boughs, or even a hole in 
the rocks ; and marries any thing for a wife, — 
on our far frontier, some red man's squaw ; in 
Africa, a thick-lipped negress ; in China, a tea- 
colored wench ; and in Ireland, the lowest piece 
of bog that is animated ; and in patriarchal fash- 
ion surrounds himself with children, whining, 



212 AT OUR BEST. 

prattling, toddling tow-heads, in whom he sees 
as in no other faces on the planet endearing 
features. He is now like one who has overtaken 
a flying destiny, and sits him down to a content, 
so rich and sufficient he can spare both the past 
and the future. 

Our sea-faring towns — Marblehead, Glou- 
cester, Chatham, and New Bedford — abound 
in instances of the facile adaptation of homeless 
rovers, sailors, whalers, and vagabonds, to house- 
hold conditions. Old Salt makes a fine family 
man. Bluff Tarpaulin takes him a wife, and 
now see how his tanned face beams with fireside 
sentiments ! Their hoarse, ocean-like voices, 
bred by competing with winds, waves, the war 
of elements, the uproar of Neptune, hush into 
cooing and chuckling over cradles. Suddenly 
and magically their great hard hands seem to 
be endowed by miracle with a perfect sense of 
touch, or experience the new birth of some 
finer latent trait, and pass from the hauling of 
cables and reefing of sails to toying with gos- 
samer and butterflies' wings. Should not old 
Salt and Tarpaulin be henceforth engravers,- 
jewellers, dealers in needles and laces, or pro- 
fessional oculists, and not sailors ? But how 
has this perfect art been acquired so ? In what 



THE HOME. 213 

school have they learned these delicate and bril- 
liant feats ? They were only pupils of the all- 
wise Mother of us all ; or, as the bee is born to 
build better than the geometer, the swallow to 
migrate without knowing or asking his way, and 
the ugly bulb to send forth the beautiful flower, 
by a reason that is before and above reasoning, 
so men and women are seized by some finer 
instinct, and pair and marry and make a home, 
which, among the rudest, w411 share many of 
the traits of paradise. 

Home-building is a game that Nature plays at, 
and with loaded dice. All hearts are weighted 
with this gravity. Cupid may be blind, as they 
say ; but one notices the little pilot sails his 
craft very directly toward the family port. The 
home is guaranteed and guarded by laws and 
attractions like those which hold the stars 
suspended in their places. 

The pure and good want no phalanstery, and 
much less a low and sensual chaos. There is 
a self-respect in the blood, that would keep it 
in known and honored channels. It is love, and 
never lust, that covets children ; and these are 
the more interesting if they carry the family 
mark and identity, betokening that the bond is 
the more perfect as it is written out with red 



214 AT OUR BEST. 

ink and sealed with the household stamp. But 
the soul carries a stronger instinct of selection 
and organism. The most perfect bias is dual 
and also spiritual. Polygamy betrays a lack of 
refinement as well as virtue ; evinces a lower, 
cruder, less secure stage of civilization. But a 
46 free-love," which is no love, and marriage for 
divorce, are a mania bred by muddy natures ; 
are the dream and philosophy of Lotharios and 
Venuses ; are more brutal than human, and al- 
together undivine. Domestic communism, how- 
ever honestly organized, by whatever saints, is 
a rope of sand, to which Nature refuses, as often 
as the experiment is made, her adhesive lime 
and bitumen ; no genius or virtue can bind what 
is thus repellant; whilst a lawless and lustful 
socialism, however vouched for by the rhetoric 
of innocence, or mysterious raps in pine tables, 
or spirits of the night, is diabolical to the last 
degree. No vestment of sanctity, no pious 
incantations, no smooth pleas concerning affini- 
ties, can exalt the lewd and base. The estab- 
lished family, clean to the last drop of its blood 
and in all the features of its faces, orbed in 
purity of flesh and spirit, loved because truly 
owned and respected, is the normal type or 
grouping of humanity. Alike for purposes of 



THE HOME. 215 

beauty, progress, virtue, companionship, con- 
tentment, the universe is wisely made spiral, or 
of wheels within wheels ; and one of the favorite 
centres or circles, as any eye can see, is the 
home. The higher we ascend, the more sensi- 
tive and perfect is this social organism. The 
animal bond dissolves with the period of depend- 
ence ; oris thereafter not a tie of blood, but only 
one of familiarity. Patagonians easily drop out 
of the family ; so do all savages. But we can 
see what is aimed at, in the story of the English 
lord who, amid weighty duties of state, wrote 
to his mother daily for more than a score of 
years. The civilized man, though he wander 
to the ends of the earth, has one dear spot and 
sacred circle ever in his eye and heart, — most 
likely has his travelling-bag stored with their 
miniatures, which he mingles with every scene 
to heighten the charm, and uses as the best 
sauce to his daily meals. " The only victory over 
love is flight," said Napoleon; but he said it 
because he never knew, like most, a love that 
cannot be escaped : he knew only that cold kind 
which he claimed to have for his " brother Duroc, 
because he never shed a tear." A right love, cen- 
tring in a home, is unconquerable by any and 
all methods, and knows the spirit, if it shall 



216 AT OUR BEST. 

never know the pain or wear the crown of a 
martyr. For the fireside the true souls hope to 
live, but dare to die. The daily task is not a 
task, but a delight, when it is taken up to fur- 
ther the joy and culture of the household. They 
are not crosses, — the watchings, servings, suf- 
ferings, which the heart assumes for its own. 

The family meets with a serious check in the 
emigration of our day, carrying off the young 
men and leaving the young women at home. 
Steam and railroads and remote enterprises are 
inimical to marriage as a first effect. But the 
masculine colonies in California, Oregon, Ne- 
vada, and Australia, washing their linen in the 
sluices, sewing on their own buttons, wandering 
about forlorn on Sabbath days, drinking, fight- 
ing, degenerating, open way for families, schools, 
churches, weddings, and the oldest order of 
things. It is one generation spending itself 
roughly for the next ; the sacrifice by Joseph 
and Jane, Thomas and Tabby, Clement and 
Clementina, and many compeers, of just relations 
and joys, for the sake of communities and states. 
It is a costly bargain, but still a paying of less 
for more, — a few firesides for many, as the 
ratio of one to ten or many times ten. It is 
a rough piece of social fate that cannot well be 



THE HOME. 217 

avoided, and, as kindly in its intent, is to be 
philosophically endured and made the best of. 
They who go must look into the results of their 
wild and hopeful work for their wages, must 
draw on the future for their pay ; and they who 
stay, escaping hardships for which they are not 
fitted by nature or training, must find solace in 
fulfilling many a fine task for themselves and 
others. 

After fate, then come the real enemies of the 
household, folly and sin. Lust plays its evil 
part with the marital vow. But the prime 
dragon is extravagance. The cost of the home 
is an insanity. Who but the sons of Midas may 
venture, in these times, to plant the roof-tree that 
draws gold so freely into its circulations? The 
young man's fears — the young woman's also — 
are founded on mathematics, and from that point 
of view are quite justifiable ; and it is essential 
either to cancel the faculty that adds and sub- 
tracts, or to drop out the moral sense, which is 
fatal, or to change the character of the problem. 
Jacob is well enough, and Janette is divine ; 
but how about the costly et cetera, — the high 
rents, latest styles of furniture, up-town dry- 
goods, Paris fashions, Saratoga and Newport 
hotel bills, trips, to Europe, opera tickets, turn- 



218 AT OUH BEST. 

outs, servants and subalterns, parties and din- 
ners ? Here is the rub. This is the lion's den, 
or the bottomless pit. Through all the ranks 
from low to high, there is the same unhappy 
discrepancy of income and outgo ; ugly margins 
beyond the most favorable figures ; chasms to 
leap that are fearfully suggestive of the bottom 
of the ditch. How to sail the domestic craft on 
this high sea without wind? is the question. 
How to fetch the pump without water ? How 
to hoodwink and cheat fortune ? In short, how 
to make one dollar play the part of ten or twenty, 
according to the scale proposed for the display ? 
It is clear the odds are the wrong way ; and 
hence recoil, a cautious courtship, a half love, 
a long delay, and finally no home ; the prom- 
ising cloud ending in a dry shower. And still 
no signs of retrenchment, or only of that which 
our politicians make by increasing expenses; no 
reform but that of our sots, who add more cups 
and delirium tremens ! Still the ghost of arith- 
metic stalks abroad, and our young folks turn 
pale and retreat ! We wait the advent of a new 
idea of life, which alone can set matters right. 

And if we look into the case of multitudes 
already caught in the duplex and multiplex 
limbo, we shall see the domestic riot and rout 



THE HOME. 219 

that extravagance is leading on. The picture 
is not to the credit of human nature, but must 
be sketched. There are plenty of households 
that are bitten with disappointment, and count 
life a hardness, and creep through the world like 
back-door beggars, because they cannot reach a 
place among the showy elect, — as if life w^ere 
an affair of satins and feathers, or nothing at 
all. Here are multitudes blessed with means, 
who have given in to the surface ideal, and are 
living up to the last dollar of their income, and 
shivering on the brink of a gulf that opens its 
perilous depths just before. Against their better 
sense their pride dares the peril of a stress in 
the market, a season of sickness, a conflagration, 
which would render them subjects of charity, 
though scarcely of pity. Not a few venture 
extravagance on a borrowed basis, looking to 
a pay-day which never comes. Their passion 
for display dismisses prudence ; and, worse yet, 
it turns principle into the street and shuts the 
door against its return, however touchingly it 
pleads outside. Honor is staked like some cheap 
commodity. Every year regiments of young 
and middle-aged men, overruled by the mania 
for cost and show, to please themselves or 
their wives or sweethearts, become rogues and 



220 AT OUR BEST. 

thieves, pilferers, purloiners, peculators; and 
swell the prison lists, or go clear because the 
witnesses and judges are in the same boat, or 
find their escape through the low moral tone of 
the time. Fashion will steal her ornaments, waiv- 
ing all semblance of bargain, if she cannot have 
1 them on other terms. The party who lives for 
appearance, and deems expense the standard 
of merit and comfort, can no longer be safely 
trusted ; but, like the inebriate, shares a passion 
which, under temptation, will break with all 
better aims and usages. But the evil is not all 
told yet. There is this further sad fact, that 
countless homes are every year unroofed and set 
in the public square, exposed to a vulgar gaze, 
to escape a cost it were wiser and more heroic 
to curtail. What thousands, unequal to the 
standards of domestic cost, are on the eve of 
becoming boarding-house victims and hotel 
dupes ! What a sacrifice of a divine peace and 
privacy, which is the first principle of domes- 
ticity and the great need of life ! Instead of 
a descent that were an ascent, because a high 
fealty to the home and an opening of it to the 
betterments of a true simplicity, there is resort 
to these fatal and cowardly escapes. And, more- 
over, it must be whispered at a low breath, on 



THE HOME. 221 

the testimony of medical men, that extravagance 
seeks extension by shortening the birth-lists, — 
its evil sway not only blighting the born, but 
blasting the unborn. 

But the case, bad as it is, is not hopeless. It 
was long ago settled that Nature knows a remedy 
for every disease. If we send the ball beyond 
the mark, she sends it back ; or the greater the 
excess of action, the greater and surer the re- 
action. A foolish costliness will cure itself in 
time, as a fever burns itself out in fourteen or 
twenty-one days. Pope said of the Duke of 
Buckingham, " He got the better of his large 
estate ; " and this victory over wealth is always 
to be looked for. Riches become plain and re- 
spectable with a second or third generation. 

The better part of human nature cannot be 
permanently bought off ; the game of the senses 
plays out; it is found at length that the best 
use of life is to live, and that money is good only 
as it serves to this worthy end. Our old Ne\v 
England families, who hold ample inherited 
estates, will be found to wisely place the empha- 
sis on the best interests, — character, culture, 
refinement, better company, better conversation, 
modest travel with sensible people,, and so apart 
from merely fashionable highways ; on extension 



222 AT OUR BEST. 

of thought and fellowship into the realms of 
nature, art, books, society ; on transmutation of 
gold into spirit and power. They have learned 
how to be rich by long practice, and rightly hold 
wealth as being able to do without it, which 
Goethe, who was both rich and plain in his 
habits, thought to be one of the finest accom- 
plishments. They have found that wealth is 
for the better sufficing of nature, for deriving 
more advantages from the world for the senses 
and the faculties, and especially the latter. It 
is somewhat to elevate and enlarge the sphere 
of one's life, to secure more and better relations 
with the universe, to buy wisdom, beauty, a 
better power of hospitality, a better circle of 
friends because a better social desert, an interest 
in the cycles of the past, the stars, the ages to 
come, and to lay the whole world under contri- 
bution. A vulgar extravagance is the efferves- 
cing of raw wealth, as new cider and wine work 
off a gas before they become placid and palat- 
able. Extravagance is a Saurian virtue to be 
superseded by a better grade of life ; or the law 
of selection, best and best, prevails at length in 
the domain of habits. 

No lesson of the ages is plainer than this, that 
all excess and top-heaviness of externals cheap- 



THE HOME, 223 

ens people. We have only so much force to 
expend ; and if we yield it in one quarter, we 
cannot in another, as the boy who spends his 
only dime for a trumpet has none for a primer. 
A glance will detect how one and another have 
spent themselves, since every word and act are 
always typical or transparent. In an instant, 
we know whether this is a fop or a man, and 
this a feather or a woman, and have their history 
in advance of their telling it. Like the cha- 
meleon we show our diet. The eye is deep or 
shallow, and betrays our discipline. By such a 
trifle as how one uses a handkerchief we can gauge 
one's rank. We are hung all over with signs. 
William and Mary of England adopted the pea- 
cock as the emblem of their domestic grandeur, 
which makes it certain that the bird's ugly 
feet and bad voice must also have been pertinent 
symbols ; for royalty is not exempt from the law 
that all excess is paid for by some defect. Plu- 
tarch said, " The Rhoclians built their houses 
as if they were to be immortal ; " and then adds 
the very words we were waiting to hear, " and 
furnished their souls as if they were but for a 
day." On the integrity of the universe it is 
certain that the vain king who made a jest of 
the humbleness of Ben Jonson's home, the orna^ 



224 AT OUE, BEST. 

ments of which were himself, the best minds of 
his age, plain fare and high comforts, had the 
true and right retort sent back from the great 
poet : " Tell his Majesty that his soul lives in an 
alley." Put the main cost of the ship in the 
sails, and the hulk will be cheap. The practical 
man draws from his ideality; the idealist, from 
his motherwit and solid sense, like the profound 
genius who, caught in a shower and driven to 
a tree for shelter, proposed to his friend, with 
much gravity of voice and look, when the rain 
began to drench through, that they go to the 
next tree. If you build your life into the sur- 
face, what have you left for the centre ? If 
your altars are all set up to the lower gods, — 
dress, furniture, dinners, displays, — where is 
your higher worship ? If your home is in the 
expense and show, and commands your powers 
to superficial ends, then it is clear you have not 
built the better home into which the wise and 
worthy most desire to enter, and where all life 
is best fostered. 

The visible habitation should be subordinate 
and subservient to the invisible, as the body to 
the spirit, or the word to the idea. Do not hide 
yotfrselves behind upholstery, and serve dinners 
to the flesh only. We enter some homes — if 



THE HOME. 225 

gay saloons void of character may be so called 
— to be at once apprised that all has been set 
in order for effect, and that we are expected 
to admire and applaud. The card of invitation 
should often be from the house and not the 
inmates ; and, with change of names, might well 
be copied from this form : " The unrivalled 
apartments of the McFlarers will be opened for 
inspection on— — . N.B. You are expected to 
bring your lorgnettes and a revised list of inter- 
jections ! " The sequel proves the fitness of the 
card, for the McFlarers are found to be only two 
pieces more of the ornamentation ; and all bet- 
ter hospitality is out of the question. It is a 
revel of the senses, and the starvation of all 
better hungers and thirsts. Your bodies are 
brought to a paradise that would satisfy a 
Mahometan, but your souls to a cabbage-garden 
from which they would fly to partake the hum- 
blest of supplies with more of Attic seasoning. 
"A fig for your bill of fare ! " said Dean Swift : 
" what is your bill of company?" The order- 
ing of the home is a revelation of character, and 
reacts as a discipline after its own type. 

Greatness never wastes itself on domestic or 
public parades ; and they who do so waste them- 
selves can never be great, as exercising a lower 

15 



226 AT OUR BEST. 

order of talent at the expense of a higher. 
" Who has the fewest wants is most like God," 
said Socrates ; or the truest life, whether of one 
or many, approaches nearest to sufficing itself 
through its inward qualities, and can spare on 
the side of the senses. Thought, love, sensi- 
bility, character, accomplishments, — these sub- 
ordinate the outward as somewhat that is infe- 
rior. The best part of the home should ever be 
regarded as personal, and rigidly held so. It is 
first and most a question of good breeding, fine 
tastes, simple and charming habits, wealth of 
mind and heart, and handsome hospitality to the 
better nature. Our distinction while in the flesh 
is still that we are superior to it ; and a wise word, 
or a pleasant sentiment, or a display of chaste 
beauty, or a spark of wit, or the sunshine of 
unaffected love, for which angels would consent 
to leave Paradise, is yet the very best fireside 
offering. Make your feast to the higher life, of 
the hidden manna, so far as you can. 

The true ideal of the home is, no doubt, one 
of tasteful plainness, oftenest realized by the 
middle class and the professions, who throw 
the advantage on the side of life, freedom, ease, 
education, and a conversation that is music 
because of its higher tones and inspirations. 



THE HOME. 227 

One likes to read the words of Eckermann de- 
scriptive of Goethe's home : " It was not showy, 
but simple and noble in its appointments." The 
wise will not consent to be house-ridden, to the 
loss of better liberties and joys. A gaudy saloon 
cheapens the family life, as an Oriental sky fos- 
ters soft and effeminate habits, and the luxuri- 
ance of the West Indies breeds sensuous and 
Creole traits. By our superior weight we should 
hold down the house, and not the house us by 
its. Life is not for the structure, though often 
lost in it or used up by it, but the structure for 
the life ; and it should fit it, as the shell fits the 
turtle, by being an outgrowth from it. The 
home is largely in its thoughtful and cheerful 
spirit and power. When we go to see the wise 
and good, who greet us with true self-poise and 
dignity and lift us into their own atmosphere, 
we learn the indifference of circumstances ; or 
that the cot is a palace when it covers the culti- 
vated and virtuous, as it was the head of the 
table where MacDonald sat ; and the palace is 
uninviting that covers ignorance. Character 
is more than riches, as we name Plato with more 
interest than Croesus ; and, like a fine jewel, 
a fine life loses nothing but rather gains by a 
plain setting. 



228 AT OUR BEST. 

The soul has a claim in the ordering of the 
house, which it is fatal to waive ; and I should 
count it an unspeakable victory, like reclaiming 
waste acres, or giving liberty to captives, if I 
could lead one family or two to give books — 
to say nothing of pictures — their due place 
and influence. Nothing can be more friendly 
to home life than a small library (only schol- 
ars need a large one) of well-chosen books. A 
love of good authors, a rich charm in itself, 
breeds a disrelish of low company ; and Plutarch, 
Cervantes, Scott, Burns, Lamb, Wordsworth, 
Fenelon, and others, are a part of the police 
force of the world, with the advantage of being 
in good time with their high service, whilst 
batons are too often late. The books to buy 
for the family are those of the highest genius, 
which, speaking the best language and senti- 
ments of all ages, can never grow stale ; and 
for which young and old, in their best hours, 
will have a keen relish. The volumes that will 
only bear a glance, or a single reading, should 
be left to the circulating library. A score or 
two of meritorious works, starting with Mother 
Goose and ending with Shakspeare, might be 
named, which every home should possess, even 
if it have to shorten its dinners, or lengthen the 



THE HOME. 229 

term of its old clothes, to command them ; for 
whoever gets a taste of these is instantly another 
being, as if he were taken from the close and 
stifling air of a city and set at once into the 
bracing and charming salubrity of a high moun- 
tainous region. 

There are a few authors whose mission is 
as universal and beautiful as that of the sun 
and moon ; and the inner and deeper eye needs 
but to catch their light to know its fitness 
and charm, and feel a better longing there- 
after. Many a new birth of taste and aspira- 
tion dates from the first reading of " Plutarch's 
Lives," which is saturated with healthy tonics, 
or some other of the noted books of the centu- 
ries. What an electric shock, arousing the heart 
and freeing the wings of the imagination, has 
" Pilgrim's Progress " so often and so uniformly 
imparted ! The " Spectator " made Dr. Frank- 
lin the classic essayist of America, often as 
Addisonian as Addison ; and it is still among 
the best of contributions to home literature. 

The great poets are always to be commen- 
ded, for there are times when life is rapt and 
musical, and we can come up to genius to find 
the very blessing we want. The poets are 
the friends of our best moods, and for these 



230 AT OUR BEST. 

it is always the part of wisdom to have made 
provision in advance, as the smith has his ham- 
mer ready when the iron is hot. There are selec- 
tions from Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson, 
Whittier, Longfellow, and many of the tuneful 
choir, which, being once known, will be found 
essential to life, and will be fled to every now 
and then to serve as sacrament or stimulus or 
balm ; and the young who have had this want 
created, and its source of supply made known, 
are better fitted to go from home, and have 
hours of leisure fall on their hands. To know 
well and fondly some half dozen of Shakspeare's 
plays, — Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Henry 
VIII., Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, 
and besides these three or four more, according 
to taste, — is to any youth or adult a legacy 
that gives to dollars a paltry look. A share in 
the world's poet is above price. A few novels 
which are found to be read after ten years from 
the date of their publication, and have proved 
themselves to be classics, are to be brought into 
the home library. 

A severe culling from the world of books, to 
get the fittest and best, is the right measure for 
the family to adopt. Instead of counting in, it 
is mostly a process of counting out. An ade- 



THE HOME. 231 

quate collection of fine authors, to bring dignity 
and cheer to the fireside, is not often a question 
of cost, but oftener one of disposition. A twenty, 
thirty, forty thousand dollar mansion, with only 
an armful of cheap volumes in it, gathered at 
random from pedlars or sought on the report and 
uproar of the hour, is no novelty in our cities. 
Madam's last dress for the party — the tenth or 
twentieth in her wardrobe, with others to come 
— has cost more than all the books under the 
roof, whereby, if at all, the better life of the 
family is to be robed and adorned. But this 
defect is general. Our broadcloths and silks 
usually insult our book-shelves. Our reading 
accuses us. Our habit of acquiring our books, 
having no forethought or reference to the can- 
ons of good taste, is a fatal one. The choicest 
fountains are but rarely opened in our homes ; 
and it is perhaps well that insipid waters breed 
disgust and drive us to the daily paper and such 
society as will tolerate us. When the fireside 
shall furnish good books, it will create good 
readers, and life will be set to a better key 
through acquaintance with the great and virtu- 
ous. If youth can be drawn to the love of a 
better literature, the Sunday school may spare 
a good share of its anxieties. A glance at the 



232 AT OUR BEST. 

reading classes of the world will show that the 
noble authors hold some commanding relation 
to the best types' of life. 

The household cannot be spared as an aid to 
virtue ; for its tender intimacy, open as the day, 
keeping no secrets, is morally bracing, and often 
leads us to live to the eye and heart of each 
other after the noblest fashion. Not only are 
we careful for each other's good opinions, but 
we would gladden by our virtues. The home is 
a much needed hospital of moral repairs, since 
our characters, like our garments, are most liable 
to rents abroad, and are best mended at home. 
Every boy comes in from the street full of some 
new naughtiness : some bad word, whose nov- 
elty charmed him, or in which he fancied a 
smack of smartness, or for which he had some 
strange relish, has fastened to his tongue, and 
he rips it out to the very alarm of his pious 
trainers ; some evil story, liable to deposit a 
vicious sediment, runs in his memory ; some 
ugly taint, lingering in his blood from a vain 
or cruel or dishonest ancestor, has been stirred 
to festering ; and his mother and sisters find it 
is not his hands and face only that need daily 
washing, but that there are deeper stains and 
the need of a moral bath. But the peril outside 



THE HOME. 233 

is constant. It is running the gauntlet all the 
time in the public arenas. We stand in slippery- 
places. Pleasure, trade, politics, fashion, society, 
— these are found to be never free from a mala- 
rious and infecting atmosphere. In the rush to 
California in 1849, it was said every man who 
went, whether bruiser, banker, or clergyman, 
deliberately threw up his conscience and adopted 
the morals of rogues ; and the business marts, 
exchanges, stock-boards, and corporations of our 
great cities, seem to be but another and nearer 
California, where the comers are not expected to 
be much better, but only to make better preten- 
sions, appear in better liveries, have their arti- 
fices and tricks a little more refined, and to cover 
their misdeeds somewhat more adroitly. Com- 
petition crowds hard on conscience, almost to 
the point of its inevitable fracture ; and not 
a few stand ready to succumb. It is openly 
confessed by adepts, and clear enough to every 
eye, that the politics of the day can hardly 
be touched without contamination. 

" Here if you beat a bush, 
'Tis odds you 11 start a thief." 

When rogues are installed in high places, with 
honors, as now, is it not best, say the ambitious, 



23-4 AT OUR BEST. 

to join them ? When conceit is so cockered and 
crowned, who is likely to hold himself modest 
and level ? Who can keep a gentle and beam- 
ing face against this sharp flint of the world's 
hardness ? When such prices are paid for shams 
and half-merits, not only in general society but 
in pulpits as well, is solid worth any longer 
worth the while ? If the world is a discipline 
of virtue, it is also of vice ; and antidotes, re- 
agents, tonics, safeguards, every kind of moral 
protection and support, are a daily need. It is 
the good home that will supply these in largest 
measure. Let the man go clown to his day's 
task with w r ife and children pinned on his sleeve, 
and kept hourly before him by the vision of a 
high and tender love, and his virtue wdll not 
only be braced, but even made brave. Here is 
an amulet worth having. 

Our identity is enlarged by marriage and 
births, and life takes on a new importance, sud- 
denly assumes dignity, is better secured by stays 
and weights, like a ship that is ballasted, and 
abounds with other and higher motives than 
before. The heart and moral sense are now 
involved. Bachelors are not held by the same 
healthy responsibilities and attractions as their 
wedded brothers; on an average, they do not 



THE HOME. 235 

set the same store by their manhood and char- 
acter, seeing vice less in its relations ; in war- 
time, they are rightly urged to go into the army, 
as being of less consequence out; less accus- 
tomed to live for others, their charities are never 
so free or prompt, nor in so good proportion. 
The house is a citadel, the hearth is a shrine. 
All high fellowship has a moral side and is a 
discipline of virtue. Our hopes and fears for 
one and- another are graduated by the rank and 
quality of their companions. Death is easier 
to parents who have seen their sons and daugh- 
ters well married, hopefully caged, set in family 
relations, since they know the greater security 
as well as superior joys of domestic life ; and 
also believing that the coaxing of Nature, 
w r hich begun with Adam and Eve and has 
survived the intervening centuries, attacking 
with pristine vigor Ernest and Celeste, cannot 
be to any but the best of ends. By driving us 
indoors and into family groups around firesides, 
the stern climates, with their frosts and snows, 
have served civilization in ways not often set 
down to their account ; for the Northern man, 
forced to seek and foster his abode and hold 
close fellowship with its inmates, will always, 
other things being .equal, be superior to the 
Southern man. 



236 AT OUR BEST. 

The best match for the saloon is the home. 
When pure and cheerful, this rarely fails to win. 
Let the feast of delights — games, sports, pas- 
times, dolls, balls, back-gammon, cards, music 
and dancing — be given at the fireside, with a 
hearty consent, and, better still, with active co- 
operation, by heads of families, and rarely will 
youth, of either sex, descend to any lower plane 
for their joys. All the fireside virtues are apt 
to become fast colors ; and as the bird carries 
his native hues in all his flights, we can never 
hide these early home dyes. 

The fireside should be dedicated to quiet 
and peace in the interest of our weariness, with 
which we come in from the world, and, what 
is more important, to befriend refinement of 
thought and feeling. A day of social contacts 
robs us of our vitality, as if each person we 
fell in with, however casually, were a magnet 
and drew away our electricity. We easily 
squander life on crowds. An assembly of eyes 
drains us to , exhaustion. Faces are absorbents. 
We rightly say, visiting is the hardest work we 
do, as being a tax on our finest feelings, which 
are volatile in proportion to their fineness. At 
the close of the "social season," society at 
Washington and New York bears a languid and 



THE HOME. 237 

heavy air ; the countenances droop like the 
costumes ; eyelashes and laces hang with a 
dreary indifference ; the scene is spiritless ; for 
these people have mutually used up each other's 
life. Our natures seem to be covered with valves 
that open one way and shut the other, and we 
seem to give at all interviews and on all excur- 
sions infinitely more than we get. The world 
is remorseless in its drafts upon vitality. Women 
usually return with sick-headaches from so 
sudden a depletion. Men come up from the 
day's contacts like bodies walking without souls. 
The tired have an imperative need of homes for 
rest ; and yet some of them find the family more 
of a din than the world. Here often are all the 
Furies of Greek fable and more let loose to their 
infernal revels. It is all clatter and blast at 
some firesides ; braying of loud contradictors ; 
barking of curs ; screaming of children ; slam- 
ming of doors ; tramping of heedless shoes ; and 
even the clock keeps up the game and clashes its 
harsh discordant iron every hour. It is a Babel, 
and a dreariness and distraction. But the home 
should soothe and compose. Fuller says of the 
good wife, " Her children, though many in num- 
ber, are none in noise; " that is, their ways of 
frolic are so well timed and tempered, so chaste 



238 AT OUR BEST. 

and fit, so fall of nature and reason, that their 
hilarity is not noise, but music, — noise being 
discordance and senseless clamor, which play 
and mirth are not. 

In our ideal homes, when we get them, we 
shall have speaking-tubes from kitchen to attic ; 
and long ago Sir Christopher North set the fine 
example of having doors so constructed they 
could not slam. The fame of carpets is to be 
chanted by all lovers of quiet ; and the man 
should have a monument with an appreciative 
inscription, who invented the steel or silver chime 
for the time-piece on the mantel. Let us train 
our voices to the softer keys. Let us check the 
St. Vitus's dance in oar movements, describing 
more circles and fewer angles. Let us treat the 
chairs with some gentleness and grace. Let us 
come in and go out with due moderation. For 
we may set it down as beyond question that 
a clamorous household, living in a tempest or at 
the end of its tongues, is never a thoughtful one ; 
nor is it peaceful and renewed in spirit through 
rest. Dr. Lyman Beecher said of his pulpit 
efforts, he " always roared when he had nothing 
to say ; " and Pope's satire, for the benefit of the 
vociferous, is known to .all : " It is with narrow- 
souled people as with narrow-necked bottles, — 



THE HOME. 239 

the less they have in them the more noise they 
make in pouring it out." Bedlam is hostile to 
ideas as to serenity, and bodies can only be lean 
and ghastly under such distractions. 

A sitting apart, as in separate rooms, is now 
and then a fine domestic habit, deriving some 
of the unspeakable benefits of solitude : it both 
deepens the tone and enriches the quality of 
character. A peaceful life is most likely to be 
a full one, with finer and acuter sensibilities ; 
better related to beauty and poetry and all 
higher matters ; more dignified and self-respect- 
ing. Repose is the secret of power in persons, 
pictures, statues, architecture, books, and Nat- 
ure, as if it were a means of retaining as well as 
disclosing life ; and health demands a frequent 
pausing to restore the balance of the system 
and keep up perfect circulations. The night, 
if spent in healthy sleep, after proper evening 
hours, reduces the day's chaos, and we are new 
every morning. Who does not know the magic 
of a brief pause in the midst of the worst con- 
fusion ? A calm of five minutes will invite 
back orr vagrant ideas and powers. We often 
find ourselves in the worst wilderness, by closing 
our eyes. Leave the sponge to itself a little, 
and it will fill with water. In short, the home 



240 AT OUR BEST. 

should be like a hush and a lullaby in this head- 
long, whirling, noisy, furious, and distracted 
world of the nineteenth century ; a nook apart 
from the thoroughfares ; a grot or bower under 
the sky, where the beautiful spirits of the air 
will hover and dance ; its atmosphere should 
be a little Oriental and dreamy, as if exhaled 
from poppies and balsams. 

A main light of the fireside is the light of 
the friends' faces who gather around it. But 
the poverty of American households in social 
wealth and cheer is likely to tell at length 
against the genius and greatness of the country. 
Aside from the staid rural districts — and where 
now are these ? — and a few old residents of our 
cities, whose race is about run, there are no 
ideal neighborhood relations, no families who 
can properly go in and out without their boots 
blacked, their kids on, and cards in hand, and 
under the restraints and formalities that rightly 
belong to strangers. We properly give leisurely 
permissions to cross sacred lines, bar our hearts 
and homes against the heedless intrusion of 
people we do not know. We are not a race 
of gushers, who delight to inundate each other 
with cheap sentiment at first interviews. Un- 
less our affections are fickle and crude, we do 



THE HOME. 241 

not take to the latest comers. We do not care 
to seek out and offer our hearts to the family 
who moved to town yesterday, and have given 
their landlord notice they shall leave to-morrow ; 
the game does not pay for the chase. A social 
chaos and drift, promising nothing, or only vex- 
ation, force us to withdrawal and isolation. 

Easy and happy neighboring, as of old, is out 
of the question, and can never return but with 
more settled habits. And what is the result ? 
Eclipse of the light of fireside friendships ; a 
coldness of society life ; a peering and staring 
habit of curiosity ; a system of brief calls in 
best clothes, which is painful and threatens idi- 
ocy, breeds nervous and flurried ways, lowers 
self-respect, has no deeper constitutional value 
or delight as of the answering of life to life ; or, 
worse yet, the end is utter seclusion and hermi- 
tage. In my boyhood I was drawn with other 
young folk by curiosity to visit a hermit's house, 
in the midst of a forest, that was so seldom en- 
tered as to render it famous ; but the country is 
so full of domestic cloisters to-day that we cease 
to wonder at them. The thresholds are countless, 
which are seldom or'never crossed with friendly, 
chatty intent ; roofs enough of them which 
never echo to the free and familiar voices of 

16 



242 AT OUR, BEST. 

friends ; hearts by the tens of thousands that 
have no intimacies. Our latch-strings are not 
hung out. Our fittest social symbol is lock 
and key. Under the circumstances our ways are 
naturally enough full of suspicions and guarded. 
We mount stilts and confront the lady and 
gentleman of the next door on our dignity. 
With whom can we omit the formalities, and 
begin our interview at the better point of gen- 
uine and genial familiarity and kindness? It 
would not be easy to tell. 

But what to do ? It is a clear case for the 
wise art of concentration, attempting less to 
accomplish more. Let us dismiss the public, 
as being too broad for our necessary haste and 
brevity, and seek out and foster, to the better 
degrees, a few friendships, which are well 
assorted, whereof will be great peace, beauty, 
cheer, and renewing of the heart. Large and 
miscellaneous parties are vulgar, but may serve 
to deplete plethoric coffers and gratify a taste 
for parade : the caterers are the only sensible 
parties engaged in them. " Calls " are stupid 
beyond the stir of an idle curiosity. Too much 
privacy breeds ill habits of mind, and a sure 
collapse of the heart. Our hope is in restrict- 
ing social relations ; in having a few friends and 



THE HOME. 243 

making much of them ; and the closer their door 
is to ours, the better ; and it were best of all 
that it should be so near as to spare hat and 
gloves, which are sure to fetter the spirit and 
draw on a little reserve. The best models of 
social intercourse are still to be found among 
the peasants of the Old World ; and luckily our 
country is having some of these fine examples 
imported from Germany and Switzerland and 
France. But will they break our reserves ? I 
fear not until we are less of vagrants or nomads 
than now. Friendship is as dignified in its spirit 
as an Oriental Sheik or Pacha, and abjures haste 
and inconsideration. 

I pray you, do not set your more transient 
guests up as lords and ladies of that importance 
that they are above self-help ; nor yourselves 
down as lackeys and chamberlains to dance 
attendance. The chasm is fatal to a true hos- 
pitality, which, so far as may be, adopts visi- 
tors into the free and easy relations of the family, 
with as few distinctions as may be. Only lazi- 
ness or vanity, which are alike to be omitted 
from our invitations, can submit to be thus 
served. Nothing more pains a genuine demo- 
crat than to be treated as if he were an aristo- 
crat, since he must resist, which impeaches the 



244 AT OUR BEST. 

good sense of his host, or consent to stand in 
a false light and betray his own character, which 
is altogether the worst alternative. " Please 
help yourself," is good English, and indicates 
the best of breeding, since it shows that the 
party uttering it does not propose to duck and 
belittle himself or herself in menial servility, and 
carries a compliment to guests by recognizing 
their wit and ability, and superiority to snobs 
and exactors of attention. A social level is 
the most respectable and congenial. We like 
to have those come to see us who are easily and 
gladly of us ; but we can spare such as are 
conceited and expectant, and who think they 
bring all the honor to the house and can get 
none from it. 

Conversation is the best victory won in the 
domestic circle, since it is the key to all other 
successes. When we are at length well deliv- 
ered from ourselves and filled with the good 
humors of the hour, the mutual game of tongues 
becomes a sacred diversion. We take no note 
of time, amid happy communions, because we 
are then superior to it, and would never bid adieu 
to the lofty condescensions of thought and feel- 
ing. Like Joshua we would chain the sun and 
block the moon, but to ends as beautiful as they 
are bloodless. 



THE HOME. 245 

The real soul of the home is love, which can 
even enchant lowliness and sweeten sacrifice. It 
is a fine bit of domestic romance, though true as 
Euclid : Maddelina, the beautiful daughter of 
Nicolo, rejecting the wealthy Pietro whom she 
respected but did not love, and flying to the arms 
of Correggio, a poor but promising young artist, 
whose fame has since filled the world, for whom 
she had a great and genuine- attachment. Refer- 
ring to his rival's envy, Correggio said one day, 
" Ah ! Maddelina, we will not be too hard on poor 
Pietro ; his disappointment is heavy ; he is sol- 
itary in his plenty, which thou mightest havei 
shared with him : now thou hast poverty and " 
— let us fancy the glow in his eye and the 
charming accent in his voice, as he finished the 
sentence — " and only thy Correggio." " And 
believe me," said the young wife, with enthusi- 
asm, " I should not love thee more if thou haclst 
all the wealth of Philippo Strozzi." There can 
be no home without this ancient and simple 
virtue which enchants all. Love is brave, gen- 
tle, cheerful, helpful, hopeful ; paints the home 
with sunset colors ; if need be, works the mira- 
cle whereby two can live cheaper than one ; 
takes happily to the lower rounds of the ladder, 
and daily climbs and sings ; is the best part of 



246 AT OUR BEST. 

affluence ; is the sweetest sugar still in the cost- 
liest feast ; imparts magic to the days as they 
come and go ; fills the spaces with JEolian harps ; 
and breeds a finer sense of immortality, for love 
is impressional and feels a relation to the far- 
thest star and the most distant cycle of time, — 
nothing being too good for it to believe or 
hope. 

No home touches the best level that does not 
stand in open fellowship with the sky, or with 
the spiritual Presence, which is primal and final, 
and, in all ages, a majestic and commanding 
fact. All lights are dry lights till tempered by 
the beams of this Sun. A sense of the Divine 
is to the soul what lime is to the bones and the 
vital principle to the blood. To lean on Provi- 
dence in high repose makes of us other beings. 
No faith in God, then no far-reaching aspira- 
tions, for our ways are short : duty is one with 
dust ; wisdom, a film of colored mist, to-day here, 
to-morrow vanished ; character, a bubble about 
to burst ; the intuition of the perfect, a cheat, 
a decoy that leads nowhere ; and the over-arch- 
ing heavens, breeding wondrous ideals, a teasing 
mockery. Empty orisons are pitiful, but prayer 
is sublime ; and, spoken or unspoken, the relig- 
ious sentiment is the health of the home. 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 247 



VIII. 

OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 

" Society is no comfort 
To one not sociable." 

Shakspeare's Cymbelinb. 

M, Mid countless brethren, with a lonely heart, 
Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams, 
Feeling himself, his own low self, the whole; 
When he by sacred sympathy might make 
The whole one self ! self, that no alien knows! 
Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel! 
Self, spreading still ! Oblivious of its own, 
Yet all of all possessing! " 

Coleridge's Religious Musings. 

" The truly generous is the truly wise ; 
And he who loves not others lives unblest." 

Home's Douglas. 

A T the bottom of all human nature we are 
to look, I suppose, for some venomous sedi- 
ment which can be stirred; and they are few 
who come to the end of life without some time 
having felt that revenge, with fist, teeth, club, 
or gun, would be a solace. We all hold our- 
selves at some risk, as carrying in some volcanic 
depth these sleeping fires. To have ourselves 
to handle, especially under provocations, is toy- 



248 AT OUR BEST. 

ing with fire-arms. Whose humanity dare we 
guarantee against all circumstances ? Who has 
absolute trust in himself? In our cool moments 
we resolve we will count ten, twenty, a hun- 
dred, will say the alphabet from A to Z, will 
call over the names of all our blood relations 
from great-grandfathers to second cousins ; but 
passion, like powder, is off before we know it, 
or can wet a finger to lay on. We blaze, 
explode, have our comedy or tragedy to its final 
act; and then repent. When some one sent 
Cotys a service of costly glass-ware, he instantly 
broke it, to parry his risk of degrading himself 
and injuring some unlucky servant who might 
trip and dash the gift into ruins. Even the 
Stoics, who were under so great command, whose 
education was one of restraints and reserves, 
had nevertheless their cruel first heats, were 
often too late with themselves. And parents, 
who should indeed reprove and punish with 
some degree of warmth, as if every wrong were 
a high offence and the occasion merited emotion, 
but never with a wild, unreasoning, hasty anger, 
are yet often red-hot and given to hard and evil 
blows that mar, but do not mend. 

But worse than the heat of passion against 
another, which we can endure as a brute in- 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 249 

stinct, is a cold and cruel malignity, a delib- 
erate malice, which, with a keen relish, plots 
misery ; and, with a deep gust of delight, 
stands openly or under cover to see the writhing 
of its victims. Did not some vengeful star come 
into unhappy conjunction with the birth of such ? 
or had they not the Greek Furies for ancestors? 
They seem like the vents of an evil principle 
lurking in Nature, which the races of sharks and 
hyenas had not adequately provided for. Worse 
than brutal traits cling to them. Some have 
tried to explain this love of misery, and the 
consequent arts and acts of cruelty to which it 
gives rise, as securing by contrast a more vivid 
sense of one's own felicity in the absence of 
pain. It is extorting misery as a background 
to set off our own joys more effectively. The 
delight is not in the cloud itself, but in the 
deeper blue in our own sky to which the cloud 
contributes, as deformity enhances beauty. To 
a degree this may be so. But bad as this view 
makes the matter, showing it thoroughly self- 
ish and unfeeling, I believe the reality is still 
worse; It looks more as if the feast were in 
the torture itself, as if the agonies and writhings 
were the picture that pleased. There must be 
a sinister humor in the eve. The heart has some 



250 AT OUR BEST. 

fibre of a cruel texture, which a perfect anatomy 
would serve to lay bare. What! here is a rosy- 
faced boy putting pins through the heads of 
young birds. Behold ! that distressed cry from 
the near trees is music to his ear. Hold you, 
my little Nero, why will you fling Rover into 
the pond, and the kitten in the fire, and hit 
baby that hard blow, and throw stones at the 
horse which is hitched at the post? What 
imp looks out from these deeds and reveals his 
vicious presence ? Can we believe the sole rel- 
ish of the roughs in the cockpit and prize-ring, 
or of the Spanish elite in bull-fights, or of the 
masses who crowd to executions, is of those 
aspects of the scenes that are aside from the 
suffering involved, as of the art, strategy, 
strength, pluck, or whatever else comes in 
play? or is the bitter misery, in these cases, 
the real sweet to them ? Here are people in 
Christian coats and gowns, with prayer-books 
under their arms, with the smell of the temple 
about them, contriving, with Mephistophelic in- 
terest and craving of cold blood, an array of 
what artful cruelties for their kind, — traps and 
pitfalls of scandal, schemes of heartache and 
despair between lovers, fallings out among dear 
friends, family jars and scars, and other wicked 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 251 

devices too numerous and too bad to name, that 
they may stand and watch at keyholes and share 
some kind of monstrous joy! These are the 
rank and file, never a small army, of which the 
leaders and captains are the Neroes, Lucretia 
Borgias, Jeffreys, and Bloody Marys, Ordinary 
passion or anger, struck out of us as a spark 
of resentment, and sometimes carrying high 
moral sentiment with it, and always a clear 
or neutral conscience, is perfection to this low 
malignity which lurks in the race and is human ; 
and, however we may reluct to confess it, plots 
mischief for its own pleasure. Anger is hope- 
ful ; but malice is the unpardonable sin, which 
coolly nourishes itself over a cup of tea and is 
the piquant sauce to parlor feasts. The first 
we may fear, the second we must hate. 

Of more levity and less blackness is the 
innate peevishness of many people, in their 
relation to others, to whom the wind always 
blows from the east and all events bear nettles. 
There is a temper that is touchy, and crackles 
on all occasions like dry hemlock boughs in the 
fire. You shall not escape its petulance, do 
what you will ; for to go or stay, speak or keep 
silence, dress in coarse costume or fine, say your 
prayers aloud or to yourself, marry or go single, 



252 AT OUR BEST. 

eat pickles or honey, it is alike an occasion of 
offence. Nothing can be right. Some persons 
not only have corns on their feet, but all over 
them ; every nerve is on the surface, and sore ; 
and any stir, however trifling and well-meant, 
or a mere sign of motion in the eye, is construed 
into an ill-intent toward their tenderness. They 
are waspish, and bristle at every touch. Like a 
vexed cat, they can never be stroked the right 
way. In his play of Romeo and Juliet, Shak- 
speare has well characterized them by bringing 
face to face, in a state of fussy and frivolous 
irritability, Mercutio and Benvolio : — 

" Mercutio. Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood 
as any in Italy ; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon 
moody to be moved. 

Benvolio. And what to ? 

Mercutio. Nay, an there were two such, we should have 
none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou ! why thou 
wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less 
in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for 
cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast 
hazel eyes. What eye, but such an eye, would spy out such 
a quarrel ? Thy head is full of quarrels, as an egg is full of 
meat ; and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg 
for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing 
in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain 
asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for 
wearing his new doublet before Easter ? with another, for tying 
his new shoes with an old riband ? And yet thou wilt tutor 
me from quarrelling? 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 253 

Benvolio. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man 
should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour and a 
quarter. 

Mercutio. The fee-simple 1 simple ! " 

And so they would have kept this fretful ball 
rolling to the end of the interview, had it lasted 
from that day to this ; for the persistence of this 
trait, like the stretching of rubber, is something 
remarkable. Everything sleeps at length but 
weasels and fault-finders. For this reason, 
Momus, the god of faulting and railing, was the 
fabled son of Night, to signify that darkness or 
ignorance did not affect his inveterate habit. 
None of the gods or goddesses escaped his ill- 
humored eye and tongue. He blamed Vulcan 
because he had not made man with glass over 
his breast, that he could have no secrets. Mi- 
nerva, he sneeringly averred, constructed her 
palace ill, because she did not set it on wheels, 
to avoid a bad neighborhood by easy removal, 
if it were necessary; and Neptune had made 
the bull with his horns too far from his eyes, as 
he could not now be so sure of his blows. When 
he could find no fault with the person of Venus, 
as no one can criticise the lily, he complained of 
the noise of her golden slippers, which should 
have been made of wool. The best of the 
Olympic deities could not suit him by any word 



254 AT OUR BEST. 

or act; and Momus was finally driven out by 
the gods, who served him right. But in this 
respect the fable shames us ; for the descendants 
of Momus, irritating as gad-flies, are not gener- 
ally treated with like justice. A petty fretful- 
ness, save with the sick, and possibly not with 
them, deserves to be treated without cant or 
consideration: it is a case for amputation, and 
not for anodynes or sweetened tea. 

But what shall we say of the more dignified 
contradictors, a numerous class, often wise, 
usually moral, uniformly brave, one or more of 
whom must have fallen into every one's circle 
of acquaintance ? They are the pests of good 
society, and to be dropped from our cards of 
invitation, as they ceased to ask Dr. Johnson 
to the celebrated dinner-parties of his time ; or 
they are to be drawn off into a room by them- 
selves, where they may enjoy their tenacious 
delights without molesting the affable and hu- 
mane. But there is one abridgment to the success 
of this device, so far as the host is concerned, 
which is the necessity he will be under, at last, 
of summarily sending them home, for two con- 
tradictors will hold out all night and after day- 
light. 

From what company can they not spare the 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 255 

churlish guests, however learned and famous, 
who bray their ready opposition to every turn 
of the conversation ; who negative all the affirm- 
atives and affirm all the negatives ? At a single 
sitting, when Sir Joshua Reynolds praised Gar- 
rick the actor, Johnson annihilated him ; and 
when Gibbon dispraised, Johnson suddenly ex- 
tolled him ; for what to him or any of his temper 
were justice, kindness, unity, peace, any fine 
trait of feeling, compared with standing out and 
constituting the determined opposition ? When 
Johnson asked Laughton to tell him his greatest 
fault, the latter, with great frankness, took a 
slip of paper and wrote on it some texts of 
Scripture about charity. Boswell suggested 
that they referred to the Doctor's rough way of 
contradicting people. " And who is the worse 
for that?" said Johnson. "It hurts people 
of weak nerves," replied the amiable Boswell. 
" But I know no such weak-nerved people," 
blurted out the prince of contradictors. 

To the perverse-headed, the wilful, the nat- 
ures with excess of back-action, there is no side 
but the other side, and no way but the contrary 
way ; and we have the story, but not the authen- 
tication, that a celebrated divine of England got 
one of these obstinates right, who had fallen into 



256 AT OUR BEST. 

vice, by preaching to him a gospel of sin, urging 
him to lapse and grovel, as they advance pigs by 
trying to drive them backwards : he would be 
virtuous just for the sake of being perverse, or 
anything for a little personal victory. A York- 
shire man, who, as we may naturally infer, came 
honestly enough by this stubborn, mulish, out- 
standing fibre, once said to Mrs. Gaskell, " My 
country folk are all alike. Their first thought 
is how to resist. Why, I myself, if I hear a 
man say, 6 It is a fine day,' find myself instantly 
trying to make out that it is no such thing." 
And St. Francis of Sales reports of a barrister, 
who had such a uniformly heady and unflinch- 
ing contrary-piece in his wife, that, when she 
was drowned, he ordered them to " drag the 
river up stream, as she always went against the 
current." 

The true secret of getting along and living 
with an antagonizing instinct, which always con- 
fronts you, is not to gage it. We can best carry 
our points by yielding them, as the farmer goes 
on best with his furrow when he lifts his plow 
from the opposing rock or root, instead of striv- 
ing with it. Melancthon could manage Luther 
because he did not try to manage him, as a 
pliant twig will often hold a horse which a rigid 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 257 

post cannot. The hardest nature will not kick 
against nothing. If the baby is given to a bad 
resistance and straightens back with high color 
in its face, humor its whim and sing to it a little, 
as if you were rather pleased. If the boy or 
girl is full of " wills " and " wonts," take them 
with little notice and no reaction, and their 
cheapness and irrelevancy will soon appear. If 
your guest rises at any crossing of his thought 
or humor, and draws his sword, be sure and 
keep yours in its sheath, and he will soon be 
amiable, and duly punished. If the national 
cabinet, with which another nation has to treat, 
as readily and naturally shows 'fight as the bull- 
dog, whose teeth are his tempters, then the 
easy and successful path is one of genial diplo- 
macy and kindly tact. Never will you wake, 
if you are wise, the sleeping furies ; and how 
often are we called to admire the fertile inge- 
nuity and delicate skill with which some mothers 
correct their over-firm children, as by a mere 
inadvertency, or an unstudied showing of reasons 
and gaining the consent in advance of giving 
the order, or an insinuation of reason and love 
that conquers before there is chance for battle. 
And forbearance is never out of place, or void 
of promise, in this passion-heated world ready 

17 



258 AT OUR BEST. 

to burst in flames. Scarcely can there be a finer 
exhibition of humanity than by this sparing 
policy ; never a silence more divine ; never a 
retreat more victorious ; never an inactivity so 
fruitful or becoming. What heroism is patience 
under provocation ! 

But one thing is to be heartily said of the 
contradictors, — they are not malignant. They 
mean no ill to others, whatever the result of 
their words and acts ; and do not make a fiend- 
ish feast of the pain they may occasion. Dr. 
Johnson plead to Boswell ignorance of the nerves 
he was accused of disturbing, and plead rightly ; 
and most or all, who should be classed under the 
head of constitutional opponents, we may believe 
to be blind to the injuries they inflict. An obsti- 
nate standing-out comes near being a virtue, as 
being the reaction of a stout and over-firm self- 
hood, which fears servility and surrender and 
a too easy compliance, as a great general fears 
defeat. It is a manly aplomb that leans a little 
away, as an insurance against sudden surprise 
and a cheap consent and falling prone at every 
one's feet. It is an instinct of firmness that will 
keep up the strong beat of its pulse by a sure 
urging ; a too severe temper in the steel, which 
destroys pliability ; too much rosin in the tallow, 



OUESELVES AJSTD OTHERS. 259 

which brings an excess of hardness. But how 
much better this than that life which is a cheap 
" mush of concessions," an insipid dish of 
agreements ; which echoes and reflects, and 
floats like a chip on the current, being never 
self-impelled nor self-directed. The contra- 
dictors, hateful as they are, standing across all 
the tracks and running their hard heads against 
every proposition, are yet far more respectable 
than the conceders, who are a species of jelly- 
fish, and worthless. We can spare the obsti- 
nates as an expensive race to whom we must 
give too many cakes to keep the peace, as cost- 
ing us silence, forbearance, our point often, and, 
it may be, a shade of self-respect ; but the limp 
people, the human nature that is fluid, the 
uncooled metal which takes all shapes, we 
despise. 

Cousins to the contradictors are the critics, 
as a class, whose inhumanity is also not a posi- 
tive trait, but an excess of self-love. In the 
main, critics do not wish to be unkind or to do 
an injury, but like to see and feel their own 
wisdom and superiority. Criticism is very often 
but another kind or species of self-praise. We 
can adroitly extol number one by faulting num- 
ber two. The eye has we know not what sense 



260 AT OUR BEST. 

of complacency in discovering imperfections in 
the work or ways of another, as seeing what 
another did not see : this is felt to be a credit 
to vision and taste. We strangely forget that 
the highest and most creditable criticism is in 
seeing and knowing the good and beautiful, in 
a quick and sure sensibility to the fine points, 
a recognition and confession of merits. That 
bespeaks a better capacity and higher level of 
the critic. 

We are divine if we are able to recognize 
the divinities ; and the best discipline both of 
eye and heart is precisely this research for points 
to move our admiration and gratitude. Educa- 
tion is only the detection of the better and the 
best, and then assent and affiliation. The secret 
of all felicity is in keeping open and close rela- 
tions with the finest and fairest in all things, — 
in the weather, in the landscapes, in books, 
pictures, sermons, orations, journeys, and neigh- 
bors and friends. For credit, for discipline, and 
as an act of justice to others, and to the end of 
the best delights, criticism should be a positive 
and benign office. Rally your angel and seek 
the angelic. Spare the lower eye to the utmost 
and the sense of the imperfect. An unselfish 
and fair criticism, looking both ways, is in 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 261 

order ; and when it is for the defence or service 
of nature, when it condemns only to teach, or 
denies the better to affirm, or when it would 
remove, with well-meant interest, an obstacle 
from the path of genius and further its progress, 
— it is then both a grace and a duty, and 
nothing will be so welcome to all true workers. 
On such critics the world may well call down a 
blessing. Who comes to his task thus should 
have our hand and heart ; his words should be 
sweeter and more treasured than any message 
of praise ! Help is always better than applause. 
But our criticism is far too eager and free and 
inevitable to be of this divine order ; and forces 
the conclusion that it is a roundabout way of 
seeing and feeling ourselves agreeably. 

The ordinary critic obtrudes. He is neither 
just nor kind ; yet he means neither injustice 
nor unkindness, but wants to show his own 
superior standing, what levels he is above, how 
fine a vision he has to detect what another has 
overlooked. His stock is all taken in the home 
company, as if Caesar were so much to Caesar 
that he would condemn Rome to honor himself, 
which were no honor. It was said Dr. Johnson 
never praised what was above him. His ego- 
tism must .needs be hard on transcendent merits, 



262 AT OUR BEST. 

and loved to commend those which his own out- 
ranked. " I would hang a dog," said he, " that 
should read the ' Lycidas ' of Milton twice." Ad- 
dison could not look up any better, because he 
could never lose sight of himself, or make him- 
self secondary by commending higher merits. 
With a self-complacent sneer he said of Bunyan, 
the first of allegorists, " I never knew an author 
that had not his admirers ! " But does not Sir 
Roger de Coverley limp far behind poor Pilgrim 
in the race for fame ? When Michel Angelo's 
colossal statue of David was just set up, Sode- 
rini, affecting criticism, said, " The nose is too 
large." Whereupon Angelo, with chisel in hand 
and some dust to let fall, mounted the steps and 
made believe he altered the nasal prominence, 
but did not. " How now ? " said he. " Excel- 
lent ! " exclaimed Soderini. It was a victory of 
self-love, and not of high taste, or devotion to 
art. 

The story has gained wide credit that a 
celebrated painter set a picture in the market- 
place, with a brush and pot of paint along with 
it, and an invitation to all critics that they cover 
what they did not like. In twenty-four hours, 
as we are not surprised to learn, there had 
come a total eclipse over that canvas ; and in 



OUKSELVES AND OTHEES. 263 

front of it there had been who shall say how- 
many self-congra tula lions ! When did fashion 
ever find one in quite so good style as itself? 
Beauty has to look twice to see beauty ; and the 
ugly, admitting beauty, will deny to it wisdom 
and virtue, or will say, with a self-gratulatory 
accent, " Beauty is only skin deep." Venus 
quizzed Psyche. All noses have the turn-up 
joint, and you shall find great freedom from rust 
in that quarter. By self reference, it is a world 
of fine people we live in ; but by imposed con- 
struction, nobody is much, or only passable. 
The generation of healthy and hearty admirers 
is yet to be born and make the air sweet with 
their breath. 

Selfishness is the prime sin of the race, and 
it is enough to give one bad eyes to look at some 
of its worst forms. But we are all selfish. Nat- 
ure, to serve high ends, has endowed us with 
so much of this bias that no one can always 
control it. Our best discipline is still not up 
to the demand. Our best purposes we forget. 
However often we turn over a new leaf, we are 
sure to dash the page with the old blot. But 
we need not be over-nice. Self is rightly a stub- 
born centre ; and the safety and success of all 
is best secured, as a rule, by each attending 



264 AT OUR BEST. 

chiefly to his own interests. Life is still a battle 
of units, and about the best we can do is not to 
hinder each other's efforts. Too much charity 
is cruelty, as too much medicine is malpractice. 
A little resistance, to keep one and another to 
their feet, and eager in the strife ; a broad hint 
to every party to open shop and go to work ; 
a general policy of letting our neighbors alone ; 
some thickness of ear to the ready appeals of 
the idlers, or even replies a little tart and biting, 
— such a course, however it look to the senti- 
mentalist, is no doubt for the best all round. 

We would not advocate a race with cripples, 
but the man who comes in ahead in an honor- 
able competition is entitled to credit, since he 
but makes the best use of his time and strength, 
which is everybody's privilege and duty. He 
must not belittle his gifts through pandering to 
a cheap sentiment. The eagle is not required 
to wait for snails, but only to leave the way open 
and invite them on by his own flights. Nor is 
wealth in all cases, nor in most, the plunder which 
our flippant socialist or Communist orators would 
make it out to be, but msiy fit men as perfectly 
and properly as their bodies ; and will be likely 
to serve the common weal a deal better than as 
if it were forcibly distributed among the masses, 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 265 

most of whom have no power to animate and 
use possessions, but would either waste or leave 
them idle. Nature nowhere suffers uniformities 
in size, color, or shape. The dead levels are 
wisely broken. The unity is one of variety ; 
and we could not remake the world so well as 
it is made now. Self-love and self-help, within 
a wide scope, instead of being sins, are among 
the first of virtues ; and even 

" When the soul has tasted perfect love, 
And been illuminated from above, 
Still in its selfhood it would seek to shine." 

A right self-love plays into the love of others. 
It is the first ring in the golden chain that links 
to the remotest star and the farthest soul. In 
finding ourselves truly, we find humanity, and 
take a prime lesson in universal good-will. The 
one explains all and includes all. In coming 
to myself, I come to the human race, and find 
my close relations to sages and Hottentots, 
saints and sinners, the abounding and the needy ; 
and shall own to the bond in theory and prac- 
tice. To know my own joy is to know all joys 
and to rejoice in them; and the first throb of 
general pity springs up with my own misery, 
which opens my eyes to see the same thing in 
another and my heart to yield compassion. The 



266 AT OUR BEST. 

defect of those who know only good health and 
happy fortunes is often a lack of sympathy. 
We must always go abroad from the nearest 
point. We begin all journeys at the home end 
by virtue of an ancient necessity. Self is the 
common factor of all the multiples. Self-knowl- 
edge is a prime mixture in all knowledge, and 
the key to universal wisdom. The heart that 
has not found itself is ignorant of all hearts, and 
proffers no sympathy as not aware of what it is 
worth. Do not fear a high degree of self-regard, 
or resting securely on the pivot of number one, 
only keep clear of the taint of vanity ; for only 
as we arrive at the worth of the soul in our- 
selves, do we learn the grounds of generosity. 

It is, moreover, the diversity of selfhoods which 
secures all the necessary refractions and diverse 
ministries of love. Charity is temperamental. 
Our love is as personal as our face. We look 
at the world out of our own eyes ; and because 
we differ so in our constitutions, to which we 
must be true, it is happily provided that nobody 
shall be passed by, no want cry in vain, no plate 
be held out with none to look after its supply. 
Nature knows the way to all ends, which is the 
easy one of having them involved in the begin- 
nings, as conclusions lie in premises, or fruit in 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 267 

the seed to the minutest particular of form and 
flavor. Thus, for example, the strong moral 
natures, the men and women who are nine- 
tenths conscience, they who set right and wrong 
in clearest lights and regard them as the prime 
facts of the world, will feel chiefly for the 
wronged, will have all the slaves set free, 
will take charge of the scales and have jus- 
tice to every man weighed out to an exact- 
ness ; in short, they are laid under a necessity 
of being reformatory and, on occasions, even 
revolutionary, " teaching tyrants that they also 
have a joint in their necks." Through men like 
Clarkson, Granville Sharp, Wilberforce, Parker 
and Garrison love becomes the servant of justice, 
and the warfare for truth and right is never 
allowed any truce by such ; and it is by them 
that much of progress has been enforced. Piety 
carries the humane instinct and principle in a 
missionary direction, and may be blind to a thou- 
sand other wants, and get a bad name which it 
does not deserve, since its tendency to the be- 
nighted is as normal as that of the needle to its 
north, or that of the poet to his song. The 
Judsons are haunted day and night by visions 
of unsanctified Pagans. The last felicity of 
devoutness is to build a temple and hang a bell 



268 AT OUR BEST. 

in it to make appeal, to send abroad a Bible, to 
spread a knowledge and love of God, to have 
men on their knees. On the contrary, under 
Girard's golden jacket was hatred of prayers 
and ministers, which he would interdict, but a 
special tenderness, like a mother's, for children ; 
and hence his great charity, — perhaps the 
greatest in our land yet from any one man, — 
in behalf of orphans ; and this brooding, solici- 
tous, parental affection, with which a goodly 
number of breasts are charged, is the world's 
dower to childhood, securing juvenile asylums, 
reform schools, missions, and colleges. There 
is always, in the needed proportions, a ruling 
passion for nursing to be counted on. It is 
said Florence Nightingale, in her girlhood, had 
her dolls sick for the most part, that she 
might soothe and comfort them ; and many 
like her, with tender bodies to bias the heart, 
hold their gift of soothing, as Angelo, Shak- 
speare, and Channing held theirs of art, 
poetry, and ethics. Howard was a special am- 
bassador, having his high commission signed and 
sealed with the Wood of his own heart, to the 
abused and abased prisoners of his time ; and 
is not Mr. Bergh, of to-day, by reason of some 
fine gift, a sort of Howard to sick and bruised 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 269 

dumb animals ? Our most prominent mercies 
are always characteristic, and, in order to their 
greatest beauty and usefulness, should be per- 
mitted this trait. Consult your talent, and then 
use it. Invite your heart to elect freely its 
office of humanity. Love all and serve all as 
best you can, but do not be too timid of parti- 
alities : they are the divine methods of best 
achieving the universal. 

There are two types of love so perfect they 
can only be rare ; for Nature has to cast her dice 
many times to throw an exceptionally good head 
or great heart. The first of these is magna- 
nimity, or that higher and finer genius anc), 
instinct of the heart which sees, like a prophetic 
or poetic or scientific eye, what the ordinary 
vision takes no note of, and realizes the perfect 
degrees of sympathy in practice, which are as 
Greek to the masses. There is a felicity of ten- 
derness which is like certain happy strokes of 
the artist that surpass even his own intent and 
must be ascribed to the Muse. There is a style 
of heart that is always beforehand with itself, 
and has met without taking thought the nice 
points of consideration and service with nicer 
skill. No calculation could have so succeeded. 
The perfect bloom of feeling is always vital, and 



270 AT OUR BEST. 

realizes, through a fine sympathy, Plutarch's 
advice : " Do not speak of your happiness to 
a man less fortunate than yourself; " or the 
spirit of the old proverb, " Be sure you never 
know that the cobbler has black thumbs." To 
see a deformity as if you did not see it ; to hear 
an impediment of speech as if you heard it not, 
— this is a prime credit: it is the blindness and 
deafness of a divine pity. When by his com- 
rades, at their games, the easiest place is given 
the lame boy, without seeming to do so, with 
a tender delicacy that does not appear, as if for- 
tune had interfered and favored him, or some 
guardian angel had superintended the lots, — 
then we catch a beam of the best sun that 
shines. When we talk wide from points that 
give pain, — praising the baby for wit, if it lack 
beauty ; when we take on a plain style of dress 
and a low tone of address in humble company, 
sparing the poor the bitter sense of contrast, 
hiding to a large degree the differences which 
are against them, as the good Queen Victoria 
is said to so visit the poor as if she were not 
much richer than they ; when we rally the far- 
mer on cattle and land, and ask him no questions 
about Latin or the latest books ; when we invite 
from all their best, which it is ever a joy to 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS- 271 

set forth, and secretly aid them to keep their 
worst out of sight, since that they can only pain- 
fully expose, — then we touch one of the ideal 
graces of behavior, which is like some happy 
triumph of genius. 

With peacocks, a perfect social art would turn 
the conversation to tails ; with stags, to horns ; 
with eagles, to wings and the miracle of a wide 
and sharp vision ; with jackals, to the great need 
and value of scavengers to health and comfort. 
If you are a first-class gentleman or lady, with 
your heart in the right place, you will have this 
divining instinct of what may be kindly said 
and what kindly left unsaid ; and will not, at 
least, with unfeeling heedlessness or malice, ask 
a defeated candidate how the election went ; 
nor demand of an old lady with black hair 
where she buys her dyes ; nor remind a jilted 
bachelor that the only bliss of life is in being a 
family-man ; nor say to one with a cough and 
a hectic, that " consumption is incurable," as a 
man of indelicate and careless fibre said of my 
sore, throat one day, as we met on the street, 
" 1 knew five men just so, and all but one died ; " 
nor will you ask a hobbyist on what horse he is 
mounted now ; nor jest an author for the scarcity 
of his readers, since he will not be likely to 



272 AT OUR BEST. 

take it so happily as did Augustus, who, when 
his tragedy of Ajax was hissed from the stage, 
quietly and without concernment erased it, and 
on being asked by a heartless acquaintance what 
had become of his hero, he said, with a hearty 
laugh, " Ajax is dead ; he has swallowed a 
sponge." 

The misfortunes of mankind are the heart's 
opportunities ; and when they are even trivial 
and ludicrous, the case is still one for honorable 
and heartfelt reserve, as if to spare a blush, 
which would spare itself, were a point of- honor 
and good- will, and quite worth the while. And 
folly, by the best code, is secured from a chuck- 
ling and cold banter. The satire that is selfish 
is satanic. A jest which is not likely to be 
enjoyed all round is never indulged by the 
magnanimous, but only by the vulgar and 
unfeeling. 

In the social circle, a rare gift of love is sure 
to draw on the pet topics ; opens the way for 
each one to make his or her best cast in the con- 
versation. Corning to visit his truly courteous 
city cousins, the backwoodsman will have his 
chance to show that there are other than metro- 
politan merits wherewith to grace the finest 
drawing-room. Love contrives gracefully, at 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 273 

length, to set in front the corners of the room, 
where we often find the best company, the 
learners who are for this reason well able to be 
teachers. Madame Recamier, the parlor queen, 
paid her respects first and most to the timid, and 
said she "found modesty to be the badge of 
merits." The general who has a brother's 
heart beating under his uniform, instead of 
jesting his terrified raw-recruits in their first 
battle, says, " Rally, boys ! I was just so once." 
Every worthy pocket is well supplied with 
anodynes. 

Shall we say there is a love that is a virtue 
of that perfection that it may realize the para- 
dox of innocent transgressions, may .sin without 
sinning, may make artifice and disguise divine, 
— as Nature kindly plays us false in the appar- 
ent rising and setting of the sun, and in keeping 
us out of the secret that the cloud is a rack of 
cold and cutting mist, and in playing on us many 
a fine trick of illusion that is better for us than 
would be the naked truth ? I know we must 
not venture more than a whisper in this direc- 
tion, or we shall have the door opened and the 
way paved to the black gulf. But one must 
have just a peep over this fearful rim. The heart 
is privileged. Like the poet, love is entitled 

18 



274 AT OUR BEST. 

to some license, and may waive, as a wise supe- 
rior, the moral exactitudes. Right or wrong, 
who is going to reprove the grace of con- 
cealment whereby little Lizzie Hexam — the 
sweetest child of all Dickens's sweet ideal chil- 
dren — continued to seem to her gruff, hard 
father, old Gaffer Hexam, the river-man, not to 
know books, when, by the favor of a friend 
and her own hidden industry, she did know 
them, — lest she should render him unhappy 
by a sense of his ignorance and excite his easy 
and fierce jealousy ? Blessed Lizzie ! One 
wishes there were a world of people so sparing 
of the unwelcome points. Such delicate hiding 
of the painful contrasts will serve for any of us 
as oil and not acid to the hinges of the celestial 
gate. 

"In our law," said the wise Hafiz, "there is 
no sin but cruelty ; " in other words, love may 
have some choice of means to its ends, since in 
its greatness is involved its safety. I knew 
a young lad who was wounded whilst in the 
country on his summer vacation, who insisted 
that the message of his hurt should be set in 
somewhat better light than it would strictly 
bear, when taken to his father and mother in 
the city. Indeed, I bore the message, and saw 



OUBSELVES AND OTHEKS. 275 

there was great merit of tenderness and better 
wisdom in this exacted abatement from the 
truth; and without scruple, as he requested, 
I played the precious deception. A booby would 
have had the worst told, and in the worst way, 
heedless of giving pain; but a large-hearted 
boy, shouldering his burdens in secret, would 
have something better than the best published 
to those who loved him most. When love flat- 
ters thus by setting the best side to, or hides 
the painful reality behind a sunny face, though 
assumed, and is true to its genius still, checking 
sighs and hiding tears out of tender regard to 
others, who has a heart to turn critic on any 
slight bias of statements? Who is so hateful 
then as the casuist? If truth were only re- 
fracted by love, the world would have nothing 
to fear. If the straight lines are bent only in 
the service of mercy, they will never be broken ; 
or Truth may safely waive her claim to her 
Superior, but not to any of the lower powers, 
not to avarice, pride, or lust, which, being self- 
ish, would subject her to serious strains and 
abuses. 

One never thinks less of the Creator for 
playing off so many illusions to the eye, they 
are so well meant and kindly, or that vision is 



276 AT OUR BEST. 

a gift so charmingly deceptive, arching the sky 
which is not arched, enchanting the distance 
which is not enchanted ; and so be that our 
artifice is alwaj^s beneficent, like the doctor's 
bread pills for nervous patients, or like forced 
and heroic smiles to cheer on wider joys, the 
case will be only to our credit. 

Take another view of this fine spirit. Note 
the sharpness of its eye for the adverse circum- 
stance, and the felicity of its apology. Lever- 
rier's scientific instinct was not more acute to 
detect the hidden star that explained certain 
ugly - looking oscillations among the planets. 
Love is slow to believe in pure malignity ; and 
any twelve men, of usual heart, will eagerly 
listen to the plea of insanity on the criminal's 
behalf. Why was this or that rider thrown ? 
Was there no " nut under the saddle " ? But 
suppose we look and find none, may he not 
have the benefit of a presumption and a measure 
of unbespoken pity ? 

Magnanimity would know all the facts, and 
where the worst appears would judge and con- 
demn leisurely, as if there were some favoring 
secret, some mitigating circumstance not yet dis- 
covered. It waits to find a better construction, 
instead of seizing the worst ; asks after the 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 277 

antecedents. " Did this man sin or his par- 
ents, that he was born blind ? " Did this man 
steal or his grandfather, who is playing his old 
trick through his descendant? Is this evil 
woman herself or her evil ancestor, and not 
wholly responsible ? Mr. Prescott is full of 
kindly defences of his hard heroes, Pizarro 
and Almagro ; and says of the latter, " The 
name of foundling comprehends an apology for 
much that is wrong in his after life." These 
people who are bad enough, as all must allow, 
who can say they are not the fated victims 
of some forgotten spendthrift, assassin, epicure, 
statesman, or crowned head, like Henry VIII., 
or low-bred and lewd princess-royal, or lazy and 
lecherous lazzaroni? Who holds the secret of 
their blood ? What Liebig or Berzelius has 
had a fibre of their heart or cell of their brain 
under adequate inspection ? Would you, who 
make so free of your censures, have escaped the 
same results under the same conditions? But 
who are you, that you can lift and throw fate 
so surely and gracefully? Who are you, that 
blood will not tell on your fortunes ? or that 
China will not, in the fulness of time, give you 
a tea-colored face and Africa a black skin and 
flat nose ? Who are you, that you may count 



278 AT OUR BEST. 

out the facts and forces of the past and the 
present ? " Let him that is without sin cast the 
first stone." Let judgment be handled with 
terror; since no one knows history and what 
evil chain drags the life in spite of its stoutest 
resistance ? 

A higher love has a sharp eye for the best 
renderings ; and, in lieu of a better ground of 
leniency, will finally resort to the occult and 
evil mysteries of the air. It is the only fit judge, 
as having an eye to a wider scope of facts. Our 
hard law is so far kind as to allow the benefit 
of a doubt ; and first offences are rightly treated 
with a gentle and yielding hand by good judges, 
as if thej' might be done under some degree of 
ignorance or by a partial oversight and inad- 
vertency. 

It is doubtful if the guilty are ever as guilty 
as they appear, since they must be largely the 
victims of bad blood, or bad education, or are 
surprised in some lower mood by temptation, 
which yesterday would have had no power 
to touch them and would be spurned to- 
morrow. Perhaps the criminal class, ill-born, 
ill-bred, spurred on by sharp wants, steeped 
in bad liquor, lured by the evil customs and 
habits of the time, emboldened by lax laws and 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 279 

easy escapes, is not so much to blame as the com- 
munity they live in. Are they not the children 
of the times, for whom the times are more re- 
sponsible than they for themselves ? The age 
is their father and mother; and if it were right, 
they could not be wrong. Not one of us but 
has helped to beget them such as they are. 

Where fair dealing is the law and usage, the 
rogues readily yield. Virtue necessitates vir- 
tue. A college professor said to me, " A high 
moral tone in the class overrules the worst 
boys." Frankness brings all the secrets from 
their hidings. The proprieties gain respect. 
The tide draws in all the drops. From the 
judge's sentence of " Guilty," every ear that 
listens should take home to itself a part of its 
meaning, and some penitence would not be amiss. 
To convict one is to convict all. Society is a 
banian-tree, with one spirit in all its branches. 
The community should see that the offender is 
he who only fails to keep hidden the general 
secrets, and that not this man only, but all men 
with him, should share in the penalty. The 
prison- walls are by grace or necessity never large 
enough ; the halter should draw, with differing 
degrees, upon all the necks. Cannot they who 
need clemency be a little clement? or is it the 



280 AT OUR BEST. 

rule with rogues to deal severely by rogues? 
We owe the bad, first of all, better lives to 
brace them. 

Eeverse history and you reverse all things. 
•But it is not easy to see w^hat we might have 
been, and make due allowance for circumstances. 
We cannot see ourselves in another ; or self- 
love recoils selfishly, and would not be wise with 
this wisdom and justly generous. The excusing 
mind is not often met with ; since it is not easy, 
with our poor talent of imagination, to pass out 
of ourselves and adopt the identity and history 
of another, which is essential to just and lenient 
views. We are often harsh for want of range 
of vision and a fair understanding of just how 
it is with those who falter and fall. We do not 
see the other sides, from which modifying lights 
will always be cast. We rate every one as by 
our own history and experience, and what we 
can do, and are much like the eagle, in the old 
fable, who, feeling his wings and recalling his 
many flights, berated the fox that he did not 
mount into the air and keep company with the 
clouds. Prosperity endangers our humanity. 
" He jests at scars, that never felt a wound." 

He is more of a saint who has been a sinner. 
Experience is the best interpreter. The hand 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 281 

that has fought with want is soonest opened in 
charity. The conscience that has been stung 
has the most of pity. We must somehow be set 
in the place of the erring to find the motives 
of mercy. The best poet, other things being 
equal, would be the best judge, as having the 
readiest skill of access to another. 

We need more of the magnanimity or justice 
of the London Quaker — was it John Graham ? 
— who was given to saying, as some handcuffed 
man, covered with crime and shame, was led by 
his window on his way to the gallows, " But for 
the grace of God and a good home, there goes 
John Graham." Said a good judge in one of 
our criminal courts, " I try to make the history 
of the accused at the bar my own." . Socrates 
advised one who was about to pass sentence 
on a thief, to " first offer a sacrifice to Fate." 
Blessed are they who can thus discount on 
their good fortunes ! Blessed are they who can 
exchange records with their kind! What like 
this to protect justice arid beget mercy! 

But we must not carry comity too far ; and 
the second perfect degree of love, always rare 
in practice, is a plain and level dealing with 
each other's needs. What is worse than too 
much candy and coddling, too many honeyed 



282 AT OUE, BEST. 

words ? We must not lose sight of progress, or 
that life is in its uses. Love should be a surgeon 
as well as a nurse. The unwelcome truth may 
be the only mercy in many a case, and should 
be spoken out. Can you throw yourself across 
your friend's evil path with a generous antago- 
nism? Plutarch sets it down as a rare credit 
to the love of Plato, that, " observing the morose 
and sour humor of his friend Xenocrates, he 
admonished him to sacrifice to the Graces." 
Flattery is often the worst cruelty, as leading 
its victim to mistake demerit for merit, and to 
rest at the base of the mount as one who has 
reached the summit. The best love for another 
looks to character and a higher success. Sever- 
ity may be charity. Our state-attorneys com- 
plain that there is growing up a cruel tendency 
to concede to rogues and avert the claims of 
justice, to the injury of the guilty and the 
innocent. 

*' Mercy is not itself that oft looks so ; 
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe." 

It is a question, whether humanity pays. But 
by every sensible person that should be looked , 
upon as the same question as wdiether there is 
a God. The existence of Deity is guaranty. of 
just compensations ; that every pound shall be 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 283 

balanced by another pound ; that we shall get 
as good as we give ; that no gold will go through 
the perfect sieve, but that, to the very minutest 
atom, all will be rescued and rated and paid for. 
There need be no insurance on risks, for there 
are none. Morality is not a venture, nor charity 
a lottery, but these are tied to blessed ends by 
unfailing laws. The virtues are overwatched 
by more than the eyes of Argus, and upheld 
by more than the arms of Briareus. We are 
sent to a market where everything brings a fair 
price. We have all we earn. Call it Fate, or 
Fortune, or Providence, or what you will, every 
fine eye must see that the world is set up and 
secured in the interest of a perfect equity. How- 
ever it may look to any that beginnings and 
ends, causes and results, work and wages, are 
held together by limp and elastic and insecure 
bands, there are no blades sharp enough to 
cut them asunder, nor Titans stout enough to 
break them apart, nor aeons long enough to 
rust away the tie. Sin never slips through and 
fares with its betters : however they may seem 
to feed from one dish, there is never the same 
flavor to the taste. There are no arts that can 
win against Nature. Honesty always throws 
loaded dice. " It is written in the sky, on the 



284 AT OUR BEST. 

pages of the air," say the Orientals, "that good 
deeds shall be done to him who does good deeds 
to others." Love buys love ; honesty enforces 
honesty ; custom becomes necessity. For one 
good turn another is not only deserved, but 
served. There is a delight in levelling the 
scales* When the Earl of Flanders sought ref- 
uge in the poor smoky hut of an old woman in 
Bruges, crying, " O good woman, hide me : I 
am thy Lorde, therle of Flanders ! " — Froissart 
says, " She knewe hym well, for she had been 
often tymes at his gate to fetche alms ; and she 
slyed hym safe away." Giving is getting, only 
silver is paid in gold. What we nobly give, 
we give into our own hands. The centrifugal 
impulse of the heart is taken in charge by a 
perfect centripetal law or agency ; and the circle 
of giving and receiving, of outlay and income, 
is made complete. 

Le Grice, the school companion of Charles 
Lamb, wrote to Talfourd, Lamb's biographer, " I 
never heard him [Lamb] mentioned at school 
without the addition of Charles, although, as 
there was no other boy of the same name, the ad- 
dition was quite unnecessary ; but there was an 
implied kindness in it, and it was a proof that 
his gentle manners excited that kindness." The 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 285 

sweet-hearted boy was on the winning side. 
He could not lose in that game, because the 
cards were all trumps. The more indifferent to 
selfish ends was his fine playing, the more surely 
were those ends guarded by the sharp-ej'ed 
watchers of the world, and brought proudly 
and laid at his feet. When we divinely forget, 
there is One who divinely remembers and 
repays. 

The deposits in the bank of love always 
return dividends. However the' heart seems 
to send arrows at random, they are still directed 
by some wise Superior, and bring down game 
and insure the archer a feast. The most im- 
probable ventures of mercy are safe. Some 
angel sits guard over every humane deed, and 
sees that it is returned at length with compli- 
ments. The Norse legend of the king's son is 
to the point, and shows that the Pagan eye had 
caught a view of this tie that is never broken 
or cut. Starting forth to find his six lost broth- 
ers, he early fell upon a hungry raven and fed 
it ; he soon after found a salmon caught in the 
shoals, and, with a generous hand, pushed it 
back into the river ; and next he met a wolf 
so famished that the wind whistled through his 
ribs, and he replied to the piteous begging of 



286 AT OUR BEST. 

the ugly brute by giving hirn his horse to de- 
vour. When he came at length to the cave of 
the u Giant without a Heart," he found his six 
fair brothers turned into stone statues to orna- 
ment the Giant's grounds. And the only means 
of rescue was to find and break the Giant's 
heart ; but he learned, by a deal of risk and 
perseverance, that this was hidden in a golden 
egg^ at the bottom of a deep well, that was 
enclosed by a high tower, that was situated 
on an island at the centre of the lake. What 
to do ? Reaching the shore, there was no 
boat or boatman, and the case looked hope- 
less. But, to his great relief, Greylegs, the 
wolf, was at hand and volunteered to swim 
him over. But, when safely landed, how to 
get into the tower, which had but a single 
door and the key to that resting on the dizzy 
pinnacle among the clouds, which no man could 
scale ? Would jou believe it ? The raven was 
waiting to bring him the key, which in grati- 
tude it did. But how reach the bottom of the 
well ? for two points were nothing without 
carrying the third. And lo ! the salmon had 
made his way to the place by some secret chan- 
nel, and rose to the surface and begged to be 
granted so great a favor as the privilege of 



OURSELVES AND OTHEES. 287 

fetching the egg. And so the Giant's heart 
was found and broken, and the king's son came 
home in triumph with his six brothers. The 
story is wild and simple enough, and of itself 
not worth telling ; but it is very wise and com- 
forting as a Pagan reading of Providence. It 
shows that the perfect circles are never broken ; 
that action and reaction are equal ; that benefi- 
cence returns on its own path ; that there is no 
mischance, but a perfect law of compensation 
extending to the most improbable cases. It is 
not in vain that we are benignant to a wolf, a 
fish, or a bird. The beams of this sun, as of 
that in the sky, are always reflected. 

One day as I was riding in an omnibus that 
seemed full, but was not, there came a man with 
a waspish face, an air of discontent with all 
things, and a voice utterly dry and tuneless, 
and looked in at the door and growled out his 
demand for a seat. But no one moved. There 
seemed no spirit of accommodation abroad. 
There was a secret and uniform league among 
the passengers to keep Peppercastor on his 
legs. Soon he quitted the scene to look for 
better luck in the next coach. Instantly, on 
his departure, as if to heighten the contrast, 
a full two hundred pounds of good-humor looked 



288 AT OUK BEST. 

in at our door, and smiled a broad smile at the 
slim chance for a seat. But every eye was an 
invitation to Broaclbreast to come in and occupy. 
All the people in the coach speedily compressed 
and drew themselves in, as if by some con- 
tractile magic. . There was a spare seat beside 
every passenger, and our mammoth new-comer 
sat with becoming blandness and gratitude. It 
was the easy victory of good- will and humanity, 
by which it is ever a delight to be conquered. 

Love is itself the first of victories. It is a 
temper charming as the air of June. It is a sugar 
always to the taste. And when one is right 
with one's self, he is on the road to all manner 
of triumphs. Love is master of the social 
harmonies, as the sun has the planets well dis- 
posed. Society is a sea for smooth sailing to 
those whose pilot is good-will, otherwise it is 
a rough way of collisions. Greatheart has all 
the porcupines in a good temper, with their 
barbed quills harmless ; and not the few only, 
endeared by years of happy intercourse, but the 
masses, as they rise, angels and chimpanzees, 
fill him with constant delight. It is medicine 
to weak eyes to see how gracefully and genially 
some men move among men. To love, the sun 
is never eclipsed ; the good meanings of Prov- 



OURSELVES AND OTHEKS. 289 

idence are always legible ; there is still a warm 
breath in the coldest atmosphere ; the wind is 
always in a genial quarter ; the timings are all 
fortunate, as if ordered by special favor ; and so 
much of cheer, from day to day, becomes the 
basis of a spacious temple of hopes. Love sees 
no ill-omens in the sky, but reasons from its 
bright to-day to a brighter to-morrow. Heaven 
always bears some likeness to earth; and the 
noble, generous, true, the open natures which 
are ever filled with gracious tides of life, the 
serving and happy, whilst here in the flesh, are 
the ones who array the future in the most 
attractive forms and colors. 

And what is there like love to embalm a 
name ? Gratitude has a good memory. The 
world will not forget its benefactors. It is no 
historic heresy to affirm that, when every titled 
officer who bravely fought and fell in front of 
the Malakoff, or who returned covered with 
glory to his native England or France, shall 
be named no more, Florence Nightingale, the 
good angel of the hour and the place, the gentle, 
the loving, the ministering, will live in a still 
green and growing remembrance. An Ameri- 
can traveller found a savage in the wilds of 
Africa, who had never heard of or had forgotten 

19 



290 AT OUR BEST. 

the name of Washington, but was cherishing 
the story of Florence Nightingale as a precious 
piece of news from the great world. A single 
chivalrous act, more than all the rest of his life, 
floats the name of Sir Philip Sidney on the 
current of time. Nothing wins against oblivion 
like love. As it is a law of the world that pure 
tones shall continue much the longest, and at 
the distance of a mile or two miles only perfect 
notes from a band will be heard, the harsh 
sounds having died by the way, dismissed be- 
cause not welcome, — so it is a law of humanity 
that those names shall be best and longest cher- 
ished which are the most signal synonymes for 
love. 

The benevolent are also one with God, who 
is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
end : and a sense of this oneness is a better 
legacy than all the wealth of Goshen, for with 
it is the sense of our immortality, as well as of 
our high rank to-day. It was Spinoza's doc- 
trine that we live a brief or an enduring life, 
a temporal or eternal existence, according as we 
concentrate our being on fleeting or abiding 
elements and ends, as we tie to the perishable 
or permanent, as we hitch our chariot to a 
meteor or a star. Our journey is one with the 



OURSELVES AND OTHERS. 291 

wave on which we ride. Even on this fatalistic 
ground, none would be so safe^ as he who affili- 
ates with the Universal Love, which was and 
is and is to be. We should flee to the divine 
and eternal as for dear life itself. But immor- 
tality is not so uncertain. Our being is more 
than a shadow, or a baseless dream. The soul 
is real. But to the spiritual and loving is the 
best sense of victory over death. They know, 
by an inner witness, that they have part with 
the Life of the universe, the First and the Last 
and the Midst. Charity feels the Everlasting 
Unity. Love and God stand mutually pledged. 



292 AT OUR BEST. 



IX. 

ON THE SQUARE. 

" One still strong man in a blatant land, 
Whatever they call him, what care I, 
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, one — 
Who can rule and dare not lie." 

Tennyson's Maud. 

" His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles ; 
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; 
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart; 
His heart as far from fraud, as heaven from earth." 

Shakspeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

TT^VERY gift carries with it some peril, or is 
liable to become its own enemy. We say 
of the wild youth, whom we still admire, if he 
can be held from fatal excesses, he will make 
a thrifty man ; that is, we see that his fine 
talent is liable to run away with him. Senti- 
ment, without which no nature is well-born, 
easily glides into sentimentalism, which is the 
most hateful of vices, if not the most vicious. 
A devout bias, equal to David's or Fenelon's, 
often miscarries and ends in rant and uproar. 
Independence is always on the eve of breaking 



ON THE SQTJABE. 293 

into impudence ; another ounce, and the balance 
is lost ; as grandpa's darling, drawn out of all 
restraint to-day and reaching the perfection of 
cunning, by being set to do his own likings, not 
only without hindrance but with loud applause, 
oversteps the bounds of good behavior to-mor- 
row, and pulls the old man by the nose or ear, 
and bids him hold his tongue. The better the 
talent, the greater the need of checks. The 
most useful of agents — like lightning, steam, 
chloroform, or genius — is never quite safe out 
of harness. All spirit needs to be held and 
overruled by reason, restrained by customs, 
laws, religions ; or something must be done 
to secure a regulated action, which alone will 
carry to the best ends. 

Our gifts are not only their own enemies, but 
they are often enemies to each other. It is easy 
to see how hostile some of them are to integrity. 
For example, excess of suavity, as every ob- 
server well knows, robs many a man of his char- 
acter, reduces him to a shadow or echo of his 
companions, draws him into a thousand false 
relations, which he will afterwards see and re- 
gret. His consent is daily or hourly given 
against his conscience. He habitually approves 
where he would honestly rebuke. He flatters. 



294 AT OUR BEST. 

He yields his own conduct to bad customs, 
— drinks though he sees the serpent coiled in 
the cup, swears when the words pierce his ear, 
and shams against his best sense. To spare 
a friend, he spoils himself. His affability is a 
double cruelty. Who would dare to count on 
his word ? since to the next man he meets, how- 
ever opposite, he will play the fawn, and swallow 
his own periods. His ancient prototype was 
Alcibiades, of whom Plutarch wrote : " When 
he dwelt at Athens, he was arch and witty as 
any Athenian of them all, kept his stable of 
horses, played the good-fellow, and was univer- 
sally obliging ; and yet the same man at Sparta 
shaved close to the skin, wore his cloak, and 
never bathed but in cold water. When he 
sojourned in Thrace, he drank and fought like 
a Thracian ; and again, in Tissaphernes's com- 
pany in Asia, he acted the part of a soft, arro- 
gant, and voluptuous Asiatic." According to 
Horace Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle was 
apt to be amiable at the cost of his veracity : he 
must needs take on the humors of the hour, 
however foreign to his heart. With something 
of exaggeration, no doubt, Walpole shows how 
the duke threw himself into the spirit of the 
funeral of George II. : " He fell into a fit of 



ON THE SQUARE. 295 

crying the moment he came into the chapel, and 
flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop 
hovering over him with a smelling-bottle ; but 
in two minutes his curiosity got the better of 
his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with 
his glass, spying who was there, spying with one 
hand, and mopping his eyes with the other." A 
habit of easily feigned or easily felt concurrence 
with all humors is fatal to virtue ; or one may 
have so much suavity as to have no proper self- 
hood, and to be quite unreliable : — 

" A creature of amphibious nature : 
On land a beast, a fish in water." 

Against a strong bias of fancy, or a lower 
order of imagination, conscience is called to fight 
a battle in which there is no truce, and is often 
a victory on the wrong side. We should say, 
the English are by birth, in this respect, a nation 
of truth-tellers. Long ago this title was given 
Alfred the Great, and the Saxon temperament 
would seem to justify it. The English are dryly 
matter-of-fact, and hate a second sense ; they are 
naturally angular and exact, and hug close to 
realities ; they are prosaic, free of intruding and 
luring fancies, and given to great plainness of 
statement and behavior. Integrity comes easy 
to such ; and, but for their avarice and egotism, 



296 AT OUR BEST. 

which often overtop their moral nature, the most 
pains-taking would hardly be able to find a lie 
on the island. But where the English conscience 
has no strain, the French is the most severely- 
tried. The French eye has a scenic trait, cov- 
ers every fact with layers of illusions till the 
fact is no longer to be seen, has all the straight 
lines bent to humor its bias for the circular and 
flowing, no matter how truth fares by the act ; 
so be that all is rendered graceful and recherche, 
a Frenchman will ask no question for con- 
science's sake ; the most sober realities he will 
contrive to have set in holiday aspects, even at 
the cost of their identity ; exaggerations are as 
natural to him as his breath. A French Para- 
dise would be a world of gay phantasms, — Berke- 
ley's phenomenal sphere tricked out in gorgeous 
colors. 

The East has ever a need to stand guard over 
its native proneness to illusions, which is well 
known to exist there at the cost of a great 
deal of rectitude. An Arab is likely to have a 
better opinion of a romantic falsehood than of an 
unadorned truth. In spite of himself, and the 
best code of morals he inherits from his gxeat 
teachers, and his affected regard for Otaiye, the 
hero of truth, — 



ON THE SQTJABE. 297 

" If the universe must die 
Unless Otaiye told a lie, 

He would defy the last fate's crash 
And let all sink," — 

still the Arab can but shift the lights, and see 
all things as they are not ; and his lips will be 
the servants of his eye. 

In China and* Japan, where jugglery is native, 
and, whatever straight lines it has bent, a 
prime credit when perfect, the ninth command- 
ment of the Decalogue stands at a great dis- 
advantage. These born disciples of the black 
arts can not be easily held " on the square." It 
will take many sermons to set them right, and 
secure them to simple truth. The missionary 
will still be in doubt whether their piety is 
serious or humorous, actual or a feint and a 
trick ; and will regard them as converts who 
are liable to need converting. These nations are 
not to be counted on like the Saxon race, with 
its majesty and promise of an ingrain integrity. 
Virgil said he " did not dare to trust the Greeks, 
even when they made gifts ; " since their regard 
for virtue was rather an aesthetic or Platonic 
sentiment, an exercise of taste or worship of 
beauty, than a birth from the moral nature. 
But the Oriental fancy is still less sure, for it 
sacrifices virtue on much lower grounds. 



298 AT OUE BEST. 

No one can doubt that the delight of child- 
hood and youth in romance and strange lights, 
renders truth an easier sacrifice with them than 
with the advanced in years, who have come to 
the age of prose and verity. The young revel 
in wild and unreal stories, — the monstrous 
falsehoods of " Mother Goose " and " Jack and 
the Bean-Stalk," the impossible feats of " Sinbad 
the Sailor," the fables of JEsop and La Fon- 
taine, the absurd and false feats of Don Quix- 
ote and Baron Munchausen, and the amazing 
improbabilities of the Norse legends. There is 
still some opium in the youthful blood, — a hint 
that it is native of the Orient ; and, in conse- 
quence, the most sacred realities are easily set 
aside to give place to fancies. In early life, we 
toy with the illusory; we "make up" stories 
as a fine diversion, and half believe them true ; 
we beg of all our friends for still larger and 
larger triumphs of imagination. 

" By sports like these are all our cares beguiled." 

But after our fortieth or fiftieth year we strike 
the hardpan and want no more dreams, no more 
alchemy and astrology, no more Utopias and 
'Millenniums, no more painted gods and goddesses, 
no more world-saving orders and isms, no more 
play at blind -man's buff ; we have seen bubbles 



ON THE SQTTABE. 299 

enough by mid-life, having lost that itch from 
the eye ; we have passed into a new and staid 
temperament, and crave truth and confidence 
before all else, — colors that will wash, words 
that are bonds and will stick, deeds that will 
not need to be done over again, more logic and 
less romance, a return to common sense, a mod- 
est and reliable air about all matters, and a drop- 
ping of the scenic and sensational. Youth are 
more tempted to set forth untrue views, to give 
a false sense, to cover facts with fancies, to sport 
with errors of all kinds, to make terms with 
obliquity, than will be the men and women to 
whom the years as they fly will ripen them. 

Far less respectable is the hostility of avarice, 
vanity, appetite, and lust to man's true and 
honorable life. Moved by these lower passions, 
he waives the claims of duty on purely selfish 
grounds, and loses what of grace still attaches 
to an excess of suavity or an undue sway of 
imagination. Much of the unveracity of the 
time grovels, having a carnal source ; or it is 
self that sinks falsehood to the lowest pit. 

Against all and sundry that lure from the 
ways of rectitude, the conscience is to be in- 
voked. It must suffice to name a few partic- 
ulars that serve to foster the better motives. 



300 AT OUR BEST. 

Integrity saves the need of speech and advo- 
cacy. The man who is known to be honest, 
and always where his moral nature places him, 
carries his point by virtue of his position. That 
he is here or there, on this side or that, tells 
the whole story ; and his silence is better than 
another man's eloquence. The Philadelphians 
were wont to ask where Dr. Franklin stood on 
any new question of the day ; and they went 
as he went, without further showing of reasons. 
It was an English adage that Lord Brougham 
carried Parliament more by what he did not 
say than by what he did ; and character is 
fully entitled to this silent power. The un- 
certain man must explain, also the new-comer, 
unless he carry an overwhelming moral ad- 
vantage in his presence ; our politicians are 
morbid qualifiers, and forever trying to set to- 
day right with yesterday ; but the well-known 
moral hero has earned the right not to open 
his lips, and yet to have on his side the weight 
of argument. At a meeting of any kind, the 
voters watch the hand of the best man. A bad 
cause has nothing to fear so much as a great 
name charged with virtue, among the opposition. 
The sharpest weapon is often no weapon but 
character. 



<W THE SQUARE. 301 

" Hercules with his club 
The Dragon did drub ; 
But More of More-Hall, 
With nothing at all 
He slew the Dragon of Wantley." 

We seek counsel and direction of the honest 
faces, pass by a dozen or a score that are rogues, 
fops, or of a hard and forbidding fibre, to come 
to the open brow and honest eye, We defer to 
plain and frank natures, as we cling to the firm 
and sure rocks when the waves threaten. 

It is another merit of genuine virtue- that it 
is set in open relations with the universe, and 
holds the best key to truth. Aristotle refers 
candor and perception to the same party, or 
makes honesty the path to discovery of the 
better and the best. In this he foreshadowed 
the Christian beatitude, " Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God." Pure waters 
best reflect the heavens. Integrity carries the 
lamp of instinct, or is the magnetic principle 
which draws life ever toward its true north. 
Truth is not discovered out of us, but is rather 
revealed in and through us ; and our moral 
state is of prime importance to successful inves- 
tigation. Invention has an ethical ground. 
The artists and poets have been among the 
best souls of the ages. It is not without a good 



302 AT OUR BEST. 

and sufficient reason that, in all the grades of 
our courts, we select for judges plain and hon- 
est men, instead of the nimble and able law- 
yers : conscience, rather than a quick and sharp 
intellect, holding the clue to justice. The sel- 
fish have a perverted vision, or are quite blind 
to the broadest and truest views. Habitual 
offenders not only lose the sense of their mis- 
deeds, but benumb all their finer powers, and 
are gradually shut in from the better world of 
truth and grace. The universe is glass to the 
perfect soul, or a sphere for free and inviting 
range. Of Veracity Ben Jonson well sings : — 

" She wears a robe enchasM with eagle's eyes, 
To signify her sight in mysteries." 

In the survey of morals, every angle is found 
at last to touch this all-important centre, — that 
rewards and retributions are surer than the 
rising and setting of the sun ; or that there is 
never an error in the scales that weigh out to 
all their dues. Your cunning trick, in one way 
or another, is sure to be turned inside out, and 
proven to be far enough from cunning; whilst 
simplicity and real worth, in what age soever, 
will make their way and find their account, 
because they are the accepted currency of the 
universe. He who doubts that falsehood is loss 



ON THE SQUARE. 303 

and integrity gain, has read the book of Nature 
wrong end up ; for geometry and numbers are 
not more exacting and self-faithful than morals. 
From the All-seeing Eye no tracks can be cov- 
ered, and the end of every path, as of the course 
of the river to the sea, is foreordained ; and 
there is no way to avoid running into the night 
but to follow the path of the sun. No man can 
hide his morals, nor elude their just effects. 
" Every poacher," said Sydney Smith, " is sure 
to be detected, — a hare in one hand and a 
pheasant in the other." The Pagan eye took 
note of this fatal tie between seed and harvest, 
desert and recompense ; and we know of no 
nation which does not, by proverb and legend, 
attest its faith in the absolute justness of doom. 
The many adages bearing on this point are a 
credit to Nature, and the good sense that has 
so well observed it. ^Esop spoke this verdict 
in fable for the Greeks. Woodman, moaning 
for his axe, which, by a sad chance, had slipped 
from his hand into the river, was overheard by 
the quick ear of Mercury ; who, making a 
prompt dive, brought up first a golden and then 
a silver axe, which the man honestly refused 
as not his ; from a third plunge, the god came 
up with the axe of iron, which was rightly 



304 AT OUR BEST. 

claimed. Mercury fitly rewarded such fealty 
to truth, against so great temptations, by mak- 
ing the man the happy owner of all the axes. 
Whereupon a base liar, moved by cupidity, 
went to the river and cast in his axe, and then 
set to crying like one with a broken heart. 
Mercury came and heard his artful story, and, 
leaping into the flood, rose with an axe of gold, 
which, with loud affirmation, the man claimed 
as his, and hastily made forward to clutch it. 
But the god instantly sunk in the flood and was 
seen no more, the trickster losing even the axe 
that was his. By various wild stories, the Norse 
literature celebrates the reign of justice in all 
things ; showing how false gain is sure loss, and 
honesty never fails to draw down a train of 
blessings upon its path. In point, is the account 
of Arthur's accession to his kingship and the 
world-wide glory to which his name has risen. 
The right of kingly rule was to be determined 
by the ability to draw a miraculous sword from 
a miraculous stone, in which it has been mirac- 
ulously set. One after another, the knights 
had given it a try, but had failed in every case. 
On occasion of an annual tournament, Sir Kay, 
in a gallant encounter, had broken his sword, 
and sent Arthur, his foster-brother, who was 



ON THE SQUARE. 305 

then a lad, to secure him another as a substi- 
tute. On his way, the boy saw this magic sword 
in the magic rock, and drew it, quite innocent 
of the good fortune to which the act entitled 
him ; and brought it to Sir Kay for service. 
The knight knew it well, and claimed that he 
had drawn it, and claimed the reward, — a king- 
dom. But it was returned to its place, to verify 
so great a feat, and the pretender stood power- 
less at its hilt ; but Arthur could draw it quicker 
than the lookers-on could call his name. Sir 
Kay was disgraced, and his honest brother pro- 
moted to his rightful reward. The right is 
always in search of the party whose title is best. 
When the swindler and false claimant has got 
his reward, he has not got it, but has got instead 
some pretty apple of Sodom, or glittering toy 
that he will some day wish, he had not. Judas 
wanted at length to throw up his shrewd 
bargain, as he had thought it. It must always 
be thus. 

The instant anxiety of the man who has 
broken the law of integrity, to blind the gazing 
eye of the world by some means, usually another 
lie, and another, and yet a third, till he is drawn 
into the distracting coils of deceit, is a witness 

20 



306 AT OUB. BEST. 

to the regularity with which, in the most out- 
ward and obvious sense, the law of compensa- 
tion holds sway. The wrong-cloer expects the 
next man he meets will accuse him. He thinks 
his secret is already in the keeping of the police. 
Man makes this acknowledgment to the sway 
of an ordinary retribution. But the penalty is 
yet surer than he thinks. There are secret 
avengers, who never tire in their pursuit, nor 
miss their victim. Providence takes care of 
justice, not trusting it to our tardy and clumsy 
courts ; and, on the more occult grounds, recti- 
tude will be found to be the only prudence. 
The sinner must settle his account with the 
universe. If man is true, he will find the whole 
world — the hills and vales, the ocean and the 
stars, and the Life that pervades all — turn- 
ing upon him a sunny face ; but if he is false, 
the genius of the world will appear to him with 
a knit brow and a reproving eye, which will 
haunt him day and night. 

A simple and reliable habit of speech and 
act ; to be always frank and aboveboard ; to 
give perfect weight and measure, and own up 
to whatever defects there may be in our work ; to 
scorn arts and deceits ; to waive all pretension, 



ON THE SQUAKE. 307 

and always to hew to the exact line, — this is 
more majestic than any sceptre, as part and lot 
with the Perfect, and richer than all applause, 
giving secret worth and charm to every day and 
night. 



Cambridge ; Press of John Wilson and Son. 



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